Revenge

by Natalie Fox

  Harry's shoulders slumped and this time it wasn't Alexia's imagination. He gave her an ironic smile. 'It seems it's not to be yet. You have a visitor. I'll call you later.' He pocketed the bleeper and Alexia knew then that he had left it on purpose, as an excuse to come back and say what he hadn't had the courage to say before. But she couldn't appreciate that now, because that visitor who'd just arrived was Rex!

  Harry went out of the back door and at some point she knew they would meet. Car doors slammed, the front doorbell sang, Alexia wanted to open her mouth and scream. Then Jaguar tyres screeched instead of shooshed and her horror turned to elation. Harry was mad and that filled her heart with hope. He was jealous, surely?

  She was dazed with Rex when she let him in, her eyes unnaturally bright and her face flushed with the amazing thought that Harry really cared and had torn out of her drive in a fury.

  'Life certainly seems to be treating you well,' Rex said, glancing up and down at her though the look was hardly approving, more derisive than anything else. 'Wasn't that Harry Masters I saw just leaving?'

  'Yes... yes, it was,' she said faintly. 'You... you look well too.' He didn't, actually, he looked a pale boring wet. A spindly wimp set against Masters towering inferno.

  She moved to the coffee machine, her actions automatic as her brain had seized up. She swallowed hard and turned to Rex, who'd placed himself at the kitchen table where Harry had sat last night.

  'What do you want, Rex?' she asked brittly. The life was coming back to her. She resented Rex for being here, for sitting in Harry's seat, for coming back into her life at the worst possible moment.

  He looked across at her and she wondered what she had ever seen in him in the past. 'I've been up north for a few days and I've just got back to hear some very disturbing news from one of my fellow directors.'

  'Oh, and what's that got to do with me?' She forced herself to give him her attention though she wasn't at all interested. All she could think of was Harry tearing out of her drive that way. It promised so much.

  'Everything. And now I've seen Harry Masters leaving at this early hour I'm beginning to see the light.'

  Anger stirred within her. 'And what has that got to do with you?' she repeated in disbelief.

  'Personally nothing, Alexia. Your sleeping with Harry Masters just strengthens what I've always thought: you're your father's daughter.' He gave a cruel laugh. 'What a whore you turned out to be.'

  Stunned for a second by that bitter insult, she gaped at him and then anger flamed inside her. 'How dare you come here and insult me this way? Just get out, Rex, just get out of my house!'

  He stood up and came towards her and in that moment Alexia was afraid. 'Keep away from me!' she cried.

  He stopped in front of her, barely six foot of fair-haired punity. Once she had thought him good-looking, now he looked pale and insignificant. Her fear waned. She could handle him.

  'I repeat, get out of my house!'

  He smiled, coldly. 'I came here to persuade you that you'd made a grave error in turning down Petersfield's offer --'

  'Petersfield?' she uttered in shock.

  He stabbed at his own chest. 'My company, Alexia. My father never worked again after your father swindled him. It nearly destroyed him. But I'm made of sterner stuff. My father set me up with Petersfield and I've just been waiting for the opportunity to get back what was rightfully ours. Stroben.'

  Alexia laughed, incredulously. Now she understood what all this was about. 'You're too late, Rex, because I've already agreed to sell to Harry Masters.'

  Rex smiled cynically. 'I realised that as soon as I saw him leaving here. Poor, blind Alexia --'

  'What exactly are you getting at?'

  'I thought that was obvious. How many times did you have to sleep with him to get him to agree to buy you out?'

  Her hand came up and sliced across his face. His eyes burned with rage and she thought he was going to hit her back.

  'Or more to the point,' he added scathingly, his fists clenched at his side, 'how many times did he have to sleep with you to get you to agree?'

  The cruelty of that accusation was worse than a blow. The blood drained from her face and icy truth clawed reluctantly at her spine.

  Rex knew the depth of the blow he had verbally dealt her. He seemed to swell with the satisfaction it gave him.

  'Think on that, Alexia,' he drawled confidently, 'and then perhaps you will reconsider Petersfield's offer. I'll be waiting.' He turned and left her with her dismay.

  Stupefied she stood there, echoing his cruel words round and round in her mind till she felt sick. She went and sat at the table and pulled Harry's file towards her. No, Rex was embittered, still embittered after all these years, and those accusations were without foundation, just a cruel, wicked way of hitting back at her for what her father had started. Harry hadn't made love to her for Stroben...

  On a cry of frustration she pushed aside the file and sank her head to her hands. Why couldn't life be simply black or white instead of this hazy grey with occasional shots of disconcerting red?

  Now she was full of doubt and there was nothing to ease that doubt. Harry had been cool this morning and was it because he had got what he wanted and there was no reason to be pleasant any more?

  Slowly she moved around the kitchen, shakily tidying up, but after ten minutes there was nothing else to do and the weekend yawned in front of her. A horrible weekend with all these doubts and fears to live with.

  Harry had said he would phone her later, but would he now after seeing Rex arrive and did she want to speak to him after Rex had made that awful suggestion? It might be true!

  With determined fury she got up and took a knife from the kitchen door. There was only one answer to all this... fiercely she started stripping the depressing wallpaper from the kitchen walls!

  * * *

  'And this is your final decision?' Roland asked on Monday morning when she had presented him with Harry Masters's terms and conditions of take-over.

  'Absolutely,' Alexia told him. 'As I said before, it's what's best for the company and that's all that matters.'

  'I still think you should have given Petersfield a hearing.'

  'Well, you would, wouldn't you?' she snapped. 'From what I remember you were pretty friendly with Rex Parton when he was involved in the company before my father bought his father out.'

  Roland didn't say a word and Alexia slumped down into her chair and raked her hair from her face. 'I'm sorry, Roland, I shouldn't have said that.'

  She raised her eyes sorrowfully to her financial director. There was nothing sinister going on here, but after the weekend with only her dismal thoughts for company she was paranoid. Harry hadn't phoned and by Sunday night she had been distraught. So distraught that she had swallowed her pride and called him only to be greeted by a wretched answerphone. Somehow that machine had spoken volumes. Harry Masters had got what he wanted and he was finished with her.

  'Do you want to talk about it?' Roland asked kindly. 'You're looking pretty ragged this morning.'

  'I've been stripping wallpaper all weekend. I must have overdone it.'

  'Oh, dear. Who got your back up?'

  She looked at him quizzically. 'What do you mean?'

  'My wife resorts to stripping wallpaper when she's mad at me or the dog. She finds it very therapeutic. Fortunately it doesn't happen very often. We have eight rooms in the house and redecorating is a costly business.'

  Alexia had a vision of herself working her way through the eleven rooms of Lane House and then starting all over again, a bit like painting the Forth Bridge. That was how empty her life was.

  Alexia forced a smile for Roland's sake, recognising that he was trying to cheer her up.

  'That's better,' he smiled. 'Now let's go through these documents before we call in the company solicitor.' He sat across from her at her desk and as they buried themselves in their discussions she was grateful to be directing her mind to something other than Harry Masters's
lips on hers.

  It was inevitable that some time soon she would have to come face to face with him again but that very afternoon was a shock to her senses. He arrived with an entourage of consultants and so on and a very glamorous secretary.

  'Why didn't you ring me as you promised?' Alexia asked when Roland had dispatched everyone to the upstairs boardroom. Harry had stayed behind to take a call on her office phone and Alexia had seized the chance to be alone with him. She'd watched him as he'd taken the call, marvelling at the speed with which he had taken over. Five minutes in the building and people were calling him.

  It had taken enormous courage to come out with that burning question after Harry had put the phone down and she wondered if he was aware of it. He leaned on her desk and studied her.

  'I don't recall making any promises, Alexia.'

  'Don't split hairs, Harry. You... you said we needed to talk and you'd call me.'

  He looked fantastic in a navy suit and very white shirt and the temptation to reach out and touch him was almost uncontrollable. But not yet, because she wasn't sure. She'd tried so desperately to inwardly revile Rex's wicked accusation and she almost had, but she needed something to come from him and this was the only way.

  'The world doesn't revolve around you, Alexia, though you would like everyone to believe it did.'

  His tone was bitter and instead of taking exception to it Alexia took her courage and forced it between her lips. 'Why are you doing this, Harry?'

  'What exactly do you think I'm doing?'

  'Hurting me,' she suggested in a whisper.

  She thought she saw a glimmer of compassion in his eyes, but was she just imagining what she wanted to see?

  'Are you capable of being hurt, Alexia? I didn't think you had it in you.' His voice was icy.

  She turned away so he wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. Blindly she stared out of the window. 'Yes, I'm capable of being hurt and you must know that.'

  'I know nothing, Alexia, because you give nothing.'

  She swung on him, her fists balled at her side. 'I know,' she husked desperately, 'I now know my failings and I want to put that to rights. I've thought a lot about us --'

  'Oh, this is about us, is it? The last time I was here in this office you were very quick to tell me that nothing personal went on here. It seems to me that you change the rules as you go along to suit yourself.'

  He wasn't giving her a chance. 'That was different --'

  'Of course it was, how stupid of me not to have realised that.' His tone dripped sarcasm.

  'Please, Harry, sarcasm at this moment in time is out of place.'

  His eyes darkened threateningly and he stepped towards her. 'I thought sarcasm was all you knew and understood.'

  'That's not fair!'

  'Life isn't, Alexia. Life is full of bloody pitfalls!'

  'How bloody profound!' she slammed back. Oh, God, where were all her resolves to handle this calmly? She clenched her fists again. She couldn't give up. 'This is all about Rex, isn't it?'

  He raised his brow so cynically Alexia nearly used those tight fists on him.

  'It is, isn't it? You saw him at my house --'

  'So that's who it was!' He affected astonishment as if she'd just revealed where the Holy Grail could be found.

  'Don't come on as if you had no idea who he was. You gave yourself away by screeching out of my drive in a very boy-racer-I'll-show-her way! And... and why did you bring that woman here if it wasn't to pay me back, to try and make me——?'

  'What woman?' he asked incredulously.

  She saw the foolishness of her accusations in that instance but it didn't stop her blurting, 'Your secretary, your very stunning secretary!' So now surely he must know what was powering her and if he laughed at her it would be all she deserved.

  'She's precisely that, Alexia, my secretary,' he told her drily, but there was anger in his eyes. 'I don't know where this conversation is leading but let me remind you why I am here.'

  'I know,' she breathed despondently. 'To take over my company. And no doubt that was what has always been on your mind.'

  The anger in his eyes deepened. 'Works both ways, Alexia; it's what was always on yours too.'

  Her eyes widened painfully but he didn't see the hurt because he didn't want to. If he believed that of her it was all hopeless.

  She shook her head. 'No, Harry,' she murmured, 'it was more, much more.'

  To her dismay he laughed and tilted her chin. 'No doubt it wouldn't come as much of a surprise to you to hear I don't believe that for a minute. You'll be all right now, Alexia. You won't appreciate it for a while but some time in the future you'll realise that I have done you a great favour.'

  Her eyes blazed defiantly. 'And I don't need three guesses to know what that favour was!'

  'I'm sure you're astute enough to get it in one.' He grazed his thumb across her chin. 'Perhaps you can put your newfound sexual awareness to better use in your next altercation with a man, because it was very wasted on me.'

  'You bastard,' she breathed, so shocked and hurt that it was all she could fire back at him with.

  He shocked her further by lowering his mouth to hers and she knew that the kiss was the worst punishment of all for her insult. It lingered long enough for her heart to shred for all that was lost, for all that would now stand unsaid. She had made a mistake, a painful one in believing that he might care.

  He drew back from her and their eyes locked in the way they had when they had first met. Alexia Townsend and Harry Masters bridging a three-year span of hatred by proxy that had never stood a chance of being resolved.

  Except for one tiny thread of hope.

  'Tell me,' she husked as he reached the door. Slowly he turned to face her. All power, all masculinity, all—possibly—pent-up pride. 'Why the wedding bed, Harry?' she delivered bitingly with the accuracy of a computerised warhead.

  His fingers whitened round the edge of the door and his jawline tensed so savagely that she thought he might burst a blood vessel and then the second of mute rage was over and he was in control again. A deathly cold smile slicked his face.

  'A grave error of judgement, Alexia. Everyone is allowed one in their lives, and that was mine.' With that he closed the door after him. Firmly, decisively and very finally.

  CHAPTER NINE

  'You look awful, Alexia,' April told her a couple of weeks later. 'What's wrong?'

  Well, I'm slowly dying, actually, of a terminal disease called loving-a-bastarditus! It causes heartburn, paralysis, brain damage and a million other sickening symptoms... Alexia pulled herself together. This was getting her nowhere.

  'Thanks for that vote of confidence,' Alexia replied drily. 'Can't say you're looking all that marvellous yourself.'

  April laughed. 'I'm in love, what's your excuse?'

  'Overwork!' She was snowed under, hardly able to believe how swiftly Harry had geared up their output. But not much else had altered. A few new additions to the original staff and her position the same, though she didn't own the company any more. She'd considered resigning but Harry had been adamant she stayed, though his motives weren't personal, she knew. He just wanted to minimise the changes so the take-over went smoothly.

  Suddenly Alexia looked up from the mass of paperwork on her desk. 'In love? Who with?'

  It struck her April might have fallen prey, like all the other female office staff, to Harry Masters's considerable charms. Though he had only put in a few short appearances to ensure the take-over was working it had been enough to have them all swooning. Swooning, what a quaint old-fashioned word, she mused, but very apt for the effect Harry had on them. It sickened Alexia.

  'Rob McCann, the new accountant Mr Masters has put in,' April offered readily. 'He's gorgeous, but then you must have noticed that for yourself.'

  Alexia hadn't. If she had eyes for anyone it was only Harry, surreptitiously, of course, though he had caught her eye once or twice, but she had always been prepared and slammed back with a que
ry to cover her embarrassment.

  'Trouble is he seems impervious to my advances,' April rattled on quite openly.

  'Advances?'

  'So far I've tried all the usual feminine wiles,' April laughed. 'You know, the secret looks, timing my exit from the car park with his. I even resorted to dropping a stack of files right in front of him as he came out of his office, perfectly planned and executed of course. I'd watched him for days and knew that at precisely eleven every morning he came out of his office for a coffee from the dispenser.'

  Alexia laughed. 'It obviously didn't work.' What lengths some women went to for love!

  April grinned ruefully. 'No, it didn't. He stepped right over them, would you believe? But it's not put me off, only made me more determined, and paved the way for my next step.'

  'And what's that?' Alexia was fascinated.

  'Well, I've considered that the man just doesn't know how to behave with women. He's quite shy, you know, and he obviously needs a push and that's what I'm going to do, give him a hefty shove as it happens.'

  'How?'

  April glanced at her watch. 'In five minutes and thirty-three seconds he'll be coming out of Roland's office and I'm just going to walk straight up to him and ask him out to dinner tonight. I've already booked a table at Monsoon and I'll tell him that as well.'

  'Such confidence,' Alexia breathed. 'But supposing he refuses?'

  April shrugged and tilted her head. 'I read this article in a magazine. Do you know that these days men feel very threatened? They are totally insecure in their relationships with women. That's feminism for you. We take their jobs, earn the same as them, sometimes more, we hold our own and we can survive without them. We can even have babies without them!'

  'Not completely, April,' Alexia protested on a laugh.

  'You know what I mean, test tubes and artificial --'

  'Yes, I know what you mean,' Alexia interrupted. 'But you're not helping their dented egos much by taking the initiative with poor shy Rob McCann.' Alexia grinned.