by Penny Jordan
Deborah frowned, remembering the excitement and triumph with which Emma had flaunted the small diamond Toby had given her the day they got engaged, but she had to agree with her that Toby did seem to be behaving unreasonably and unfairly. He had made it more than plain over dinner how much he resented Emma’s inheritance.
‘Take it from me, Deborah,’ Emma warned her as she dried her hands and smoothed on hand cream, ‘when a man tells you that he sees you as an equal, don’t believe him. What he means is that he’s perfectly prepared to pretend that he does, just so long as he remains more equal than you.’
Some men might be like that, Deborah reflected as she rejoined Toby and Mark, but Mark certainly wasn’t one of them. One of the reasons she had been drawn to him in the first place was his quiet air of calmness, his lack of the kind of keen competitive edge that sometimes drove her; she was wise enough to recognise that, no matter how challenging a relationship with a kindred spirit might be, in the end its sheer intensity and ferocity would burn itself out.
She loved Mark and she admired him for all the qualities he possessed which she did not. She applauded his intelligence and diligence, and the very lack of the ruthless drive to gather and hold power, which the others had teased him for at university, was among the qualities she admired most in him. Mark, with his steadfast, quiet strength, counterbalanced her own impetuosity and impatience. She valued his judgement and, although she would never have admitted it to anyone, least of all him, for fear of ridicule, a small, secret part of her was still semi-inclined to set him apart from the other men she knew, to place him, if not on a pedestal, then certainly far above men such as Ryan Bridges, her immediate boss, whose Machiavellian nature and love of intrigue and power had taken him in ten years with the practice from a newly qualified lackey to a partnership and control over the receivership and liquidation section of the business—via, it had to be admitted, an astute marriage to the daughter of one of the most senior partners who had died only a couple of years after his retirement.
It was a well-known fact within the company that Ryan was not above breaking his marriage vows when it suited him, but his affairs were invariably brief and always ended should the recipient of his attentions begin to interpret them as anything other than the brief satisfaction of his sexual needs and ego.
Even while a part of her unwillingly admired him for his sheer drive and determination, Deborah knew that she could never be happy with a man like that. He might pay lip-service to the ideas of female equality, but lip service was all it was, even if his department did have a far larger proportion of qualified female staff than any of the others. There was a reason for that, and it had nothing to do with the superiority of the girls’ accountancy qualifications.
No one spending any length of time in the department could miss the fact that Ryan had a taste for tall, long-legged young women, nor that he enjoyed overwhelming their intelligence and common sense with his sexuality.
He had tried it on with her when she’d first joined the firm, but she had made it more than plain that she just wasn’t interested. Since then he had treated her with amusement and knowingness. He was a very sexually overpowering man, in every sense of the word. At six feet two, he had the physique and the handsomely battered face of an ex-rugby player, and at thirty-five he possessed such strong sexuality that sometimes Deborah felt as though you could almost smell it on the air after he had left the room.
She was constantly torn between admiration and loathing of him. As an accountant, a fellow professional, she admired him and all that he had achieved; as a woman… She gave a small shiver, redirecting her thoughts to the couple they had just left as Mark unlocked the car.
‘What a dreadful evening,’ she commented as he started the engine. ‘Poor Emma, I felt so sorry for her. I never imagined that Toby could ever behave so badly…’
Mark was frowning.
‘What exactly do you mean, Toby is behaving badly? Quite frankly I thought he showed remarkable restraint. If I’d been him I think I’d have throttled her well before we reached the main course, and smashed every bit of her damned dinner service into the bargain. God, I don’t know how he stands it. It must be like selling your soul to the devil. She’s certainly got the whiphand in that relationship, and you can see that she intends to use it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Deborah asked him, frowning. ‘It is her money; it’s only natural that she should feel she has a right to decide how it’s spent…’
‘Oh, yeah, it’s her money all right; she made sure we all knew that, didn’t she? I’ve never seen a man so humiliated and emasculated. Poor sod, he told me that when they go to bed now he feels like a stud being paid for sex. He says it’s totally changed her, and that——’
‘A stud—Toby?’ Deborah started to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’ Mark asked her curtly.
‘Well, it’s just that Toby… and you… well, you’re just not the stud type, are you… not like… ?’
She winced as Mark crashed through the gears, realising too late that she had offended him. ‘Mark, I didn’t mean that as a complaint… I like you the way you are,’ she told him gently, reaching out and touching his knee lightly. ‘As far as I’m concerned, over-sexed, pushy men are a complete turn-off. All they can think about is their own satisfaction. They never see past their own egos or even think about what a woman might want.’
‘Whereas poor unsexy sods like me have to make sure we know all about how to make our partners happy if we’re ever going to be lucky enough to get a decent lay… is that what you’re saying?’
Deborah gave him a surprised look. What on earth had got into him? He was reacting as though she had been criticising him personally and not merely passing comment on the evening and the relationship between Emma and Toby.
‘Well, at least having too much money is never likely to be a problem we’ll have to face,’ she told him with a grin. ‘I don’t have any rich old grandmother wanting to leave me her all…’
‘It isn’t the money, it’s the way Emma’s using it as a weapon to bludgeon the life out of Toby that’s the problem,’ Mark told her. ‘And the way she’s enjoying doing it. That’s what really sickens me…’
‘Mark, that isn’t true!’
‘Isn’t it?’ he asked her grimly. ‘Would you admit it, even if you thought it was, or would you just close ranks in female solidarity?’
‘That’s unfair,’ Deborah protested. ‘I’d never support another woman simply because she was a woman. You know me better than that, surely.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ he agreed. ‘It’s just that I’m feeling a bit edgy at the moment. Peter said there were comments made at last week’s partnership meeting about the fact that the income from our section is down—again—and guess who got a real kick out of pointing it out?’
‘Ryan?’ Deborah hazarded. ‘Well, you can’t blame him for feeling pleased that we’re doing so well. Splitting the receivership and liquidation side of things off into a separate department was his idea. I know he can be a bit over the top at times.’
‘He’s a clever bastard, I’ll give him that.’
‘Yes, you have to admire him for what he’s achieved,’ Deborah agreed.
‘But not for the way he’s achieved it.’ Mark pointed out.
‘No,’ she agreed, stifling a yawn. ‘I still can’t believe how much Emma and Toby have changed. She always seemed to lean on him so much…’
‘A real clinging vine, and now that she’s outgrown his support she’s threatening to strangle him. She’s one of the most manipulative women I’ve ever met. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d staged the whole thing tonight, just to give her grounds to divorce him.’
‘Oh, Mark, that’s not fair.’
‘Isn’t it? You know you can be very naïve when it comes to human motivations.’
‘Mmm… perhaps, but not naïve enough not to know how lucky I am to have you,’ she told him lovingly as he stopped for some traffic
lights and she leaned across to kiss him lightly. ‘Seeing Toby with Emma tonight made me realise all over again how lucky I am to have you. He was so obviously jealous of her, Mark, it was horrible, so demeaning for both of them. I could never imagine you behaving like that. You’ve always encouraged me to stretch myself and grow… you were the one who talked me into applying for this job and persuaded me I could do it… You’ve always been so generous both personally and professionally.’
‘Ah, perhaps that’s because I enjoy the superior role of mentor,’ he told her teasingly.
‘Superior… we’ll see about that,’ Deborah challenged back, laughing at him as he bent his head to kiss her and then cursed as the lights changed to green and the car behind made a noisy protest at his slowness.
* * *
‘Mmm… that was lovely,’ Deborah commented drowsily as she smoothed her fingertip lovingly down Mark’s back. It was still slightly damp with perspiration from their lovemaking and she bent her head to breathe in the scent of him and kiss the indentation of his spine.
‘Hey, I thought you said you wanted to leave early in the morning…’
‘Mmm… so I did, but it isn’t morning yet, is it?’ she teased him as she stroked her hand over his hipbone and the vulnerable flesh of his stomach.
Mark had a lovely body, wholesomely, perfectly male in a way that never failed to delight her senses. Unlike Ryan, who was so obviously and overpoweringly sexual that the fastidious side of her nature automatically retreated from such potency.
Mark’s sexuality was far more subtle than that, and, to her, far, far more erotic. He was a generous lover, experienced enough to know how to please her but not so arrogant as to resent her showing him how he could increase that pleasure.
She herself was an uninhibited lover, her sexuality both voluptuous and yet at the same time unexpectedly refined, so that she always carried with her an air of somehow being slightly set apart from the rest of her sex.
Some men… men like Ryan… seemed to find that a challenge that irked and irritated them. Mark was not like that, though. He accepted that, no matter how sensually voluptuous she might be in bed, when they were not in bed the other side of her nature was repulsed by the kind of man who had to make constant sexual comments and innuendo.
She laughed herself at the odd marriage within her of sensualist and prude, but no one else other than Mark was allowed to laugh about it with her. While she was quite happy not to be married, she believed totally in a monogamous relationship and in fidelity within that relationship. She would never dream of being unfaithful to Mark, and if she ever did it would mean that their relationship was over. And if he was unfaithful to her? Her fingers ceased their erotic journey as she stared into the darkness.
Mark would never do that to her; he knew how much he meant to her. He knew how much she needed and depended on him, even if others did not. It wasn’t just love and desire that kept them together, it was trust as well, trust and respect; shared goals and ambitions and a shared belief in one another; a shared support for one another.
As a child she had been teased for being too much of an idealist, and so she had learned to conceal that vulnerability within her, but Mark knew it was there.
‘How do I look?’ she asked him a short while later when they had torn themselves out of bed.
‘Fine,’ Mark replied absently without turning round.
‘Oh, Mark,’ she protested.
‘What is it?’ He put down his razor and turned round.
‘You can’t have forgotten,’ Deborah protested.
‘Forgotten what?’
‘That Ryan’s taking me out to lunch.’
Mark grunted. ‘Oh, that—probably wants to proposition you—again.’
‘No, it isn’t that… he’s been dropping hints all week about how pleased he’s been with my work and how much the department is expanding. I think this is it, Mark… I think he’s actually going to put me in charge of my own section… give me something to really get my teeth into…’
‘Some poor bankrupt to savage, you mean… wow, won’t that be great?’
Deborah gave him a startled look. There was a thread of acid bitterness in his voice that she had never heard before. ‘Look, I know you don’t like that side of things…’
‘Save it until tonight, will you, Deborah? I’ve got a hell of a lot on my mind right now. Somehow I don’t think your department’s the only one in for a reshuffle, only we’re on the down side of the seesaw.’
Deborah frowned. ‘What do you mean, Mark—what’s… ?’
‘Forget it,’ he told her. ‘I’m just a bit on edge, that’s all. Good luck at lunchtime, and a fiver on it that he will proposition you.’
Deborah laughed. ‘The way you did the first time we went to bed. Remember?’
‘As I remember it, you were the one who did the propositioning on that occasion.’
‘I was drunk… It was Dutch courage…’
‘Not the next day when you rang up to ask me if it was still on for dinner, it wasn’t,’ he reminded her with a grin.
‘All right, so I finally got tired of waiting for you to do the asking, but I don’t recall ever hearing you say no.’
They were both laughing as he leaned over to kiss her. Last night had been good between them, Deborah reflected happily as she finished getting dressed. Very good! She loved it that their sexual relationship was so harmonious; it made her feel complete, wholly, fully alive and fully a woman. She would hate to have the kind of lover who bullied or domineered her… the kind of lover that a man like Ryan would be, or the kind Emma complained that Toby had become.
* * *
‘So… you’re looking very pleased with yourself today… good night last night?’
Deborah smiled vaguely, tucking a strand of her sleekly bobbed chestnut hair behind her ear. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it was; we had dinner with some old friends.’
She knew what Ryan was trying to do, but she wasn’t going to be tricked into playing that game.
He had brought her to one of the area’s most exclusive and expensive restaurants for lunch and it hadn’t escaped her notice that the majority of the other lunchers there were very obviously couples.
‘Nice place, this, isn’t it?’ he asked her. ‘You should see the bedrooms, all four-poster beds and the fabrics all silk and velvet… very sensual… very tactile… very romantic.’
Deborah refused to respond. She knew from experience that sooner rather than later he would lose interest and stop baiting her. And halfway through their main course he did.
‘I like you, Deborah,’ he told her, ‘and I like the way you work. You’re intelligent and ambitious and you know how to get the best out of people… how to handle them, and that’s something that’s very important in our line of work. We’re dealing with people at their most vulnerable and volatile and therefore at their most dangerous… It’s just as well Andrew Ryecart committed suicide before we were appointed and not after. It wouldn’t do the firm’s reputation a lot of good to have that kind of thing splashed all over the papers. You’ll know that we’ve been appointed to handle the liquidation?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s going to be a tricky one; there are no assets to speak of, and there is some suggestion of misuse of company funds before he killed himself. The bank are reasonably securely covered; there’s a fairly large equity in the house, plus the value of the site—we’ll never be able to find a buyer for the business as a going concern, of course, and the trade creditors won’t get much.’
‘And the workforce?’
‘Preferred creditors.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘That will be the first thing you’ll have to do, of course: issue them all with redundancy notices. Then it will be a matter of going through the books and…’
Deborah’s heart had started to thump heavily with excitement but she fought to control it, asking carefully, ‘Does that mean that you’re putting me in charge of the liquidation?’
&
nbsp; Ryan put down his cutlery. ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked her quizzically. Deborah laughed. Even now he still could not resist flirting with her.
‘It’s certainly a step in the right direction,’ she agreed demurely.
‘Mmm…’ he agreed softly. ‘I thought it might be.’
Careful, Deb, Deborah warned herself as she caught the undertone in his voice, but before she could make any comment he had started outlining what he planned to do, the staff he intended to put under her authority.
‘This one might seem easy, but that doesn’t mean it will be,’ he warned her. ‘There’s going to be a lot of bad feeling stirred up locally; the widow doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on or the fact that she’s virtually going to be out on the street. Luckily there’s family money there.’
They discussed the procedures involved over the rest of their lunch and when they finally got up to leave Deborah’s heart was singing with excitement. She couldn’t wait to get home and tell Mark her good news. They had made a rule not to have any contact with one another at work of a personal nature, and she knew what he would say if she broke it, even for something as important as this. Unlike Ryan’s, Mark’s ethics were fixed and wholly reliable.
‘There will be an increase in salary, of course,’ Ryan told her as they left the restaurant. ‘Oh, and a new company car. What’s Mark got?’ he asked casually. Absently Deborah told him, cars were not something that interested her very much.
‘Ah, well, yours will be the more upmarket model, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find a way of soothing any hurt male pride.’
Deborah looked at him. What on earth was he talking about? Mark simply wasn’t that kind of man. No, Mark would be as thrilled for her as she would have been for him if their positions had been reversed. She and Mark had a totally equal and loving relationship in which neither of them competed with the other, but supported and protected one another instead.
Mark… Mark. Oh, she couldn’t wait for tonight… They would really celebrate… not at some expensive restaurant, but at home, together… in bed. She hugged the anticipatory pleasure of what she was thinking to herself as Ryan drove them back into town.