Secret Intentions

by Caitlyn Nicholas

  The crowd seemed thicker than before and she felt a second’s panic at the thought of wading through all those people and trying to find her brother. Spying a haze of cigar smoke through an open door, she thought of her father, and went to see if Paul was with him.

  He sat in a large red leather chair, smoking a cigar. A lead-crystal decanter of port sat on the low table beside him and one of his old Eton school friends made conversation. They both rose formally as Zani approached.

  “Dad.” She embraced him warmly, then felt him stiffen.

  “Would you excuse us?” he said to his companion, and the fellow amiably took his leave. Her father gestured Zani to the vacant chair, and she sat obediently.

  “Are you happy now?” he asked, a cruel sneer making him look old and sour.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Though she did.

  “I just asked for one simple thing, and you couldn’t even do that for me. Now look what’s happened, you’ve ruined me, ruined me, girl. Your mother would be ashamed.”

  Zani frowned. “Dad, what is this about?”

  “All you needed to do was find out who the hell was leaking the secrets at Sunberri and stop them. It wasn’t that hard…”

  “Dad I had two days there, I didn’t have time to find out anything,” she protested.

  “I don’t care, you were supposed to stop this from happening you were my last and only hope. I’m going to lose everything, all because of you.”

  Guilt wrenched Zani. “Dad that’s not fair. Perhaps you shouldn’t have invested so much in one company,” she pointed out reasonably.

  At that moment Corbin appeared in the room, accompanied by his willowy girlfriend and closely followed by Paul. Zani decided she was living in a nightmare and someone, somewhere, was having a long hard laugh at her predicament.

  “De Villiers,” Zani’s father called loudly, causing those in the room, mostly hunched over card games and the like, to hush. There were a few women dotted around, and Zani could have sworn each whispered something to the other. It was like a scene from a historical romance. At any moment she expected challenges to be made and pistols at dawn declared.

  At least Sebastian had disappeared into the woodwork.

  Sebastian walked into the room.

  Great.

  Sebastian’s narrowed gaze slid over Zani and came to rest on Corbin. Paul moved to his father’s side. Everyone watched Zani and her father. Tension reverberated. Card games and conversations were forgotten. A woman outside the room shrieked with laughter.

  “De Villiers,” he repeated. “Well, I hope you’re happy. This must be everything you’ve deceived for. When are you going to announce your plans for a buyout?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Corbin replied mildly. “Come now, have a drink, let’s discuss this.”

  “I know what you did, we know it was you, typical French, no sense of loyalty, sell your own grandmother, you would,” Zani’s father said with contempt, raising his voice.

  “I am ruined, ruined do you hear me?” He began to rant. “And what did you do to my daughter? I know. Seduced her you filthy frog.” At this there was an uneasy titter. But Zani barely took in the words. Fear unfolded as she watched her father. He’d gone a deep shade of scarlet and was spitting, he was so beside himself. “I won’t have it, I won’t have it, I tell you.” With a strangled gasp, he clutched his chest and dropped to the floor.

  “Call an ambulance, please, someone call an ambulance,” called Zani, kneeling beside him and wondering what the hell to do. Then Corbin’s blonde girlfriend shoved her aside and began to check for pulse and breathing. Finding none, she started CPR. Paul, white as a sheet, simply stared, and the crowd in the room stood frozen, watching. Corbin calmly called an ambulance.

  The next few hours passed in a dreamlike blur for Zani. Everything happened around her. Corbin’s solid, dependable presence never left her side. His calm and efficient girlfriend, who seemed to know everything and everyone, had one of the country’s premier heart surgeons waiting for them when they arrived at the nearby St John’s Hospital.

  The paramedics revived her father at the ball, then gently moved him on a stretcher. Paul disappeared, and Zani travelled alone with her father in the ambulance to the hospital. His heart stopped on the way, and it was with a kind of sick horror that she watched the unflappable paramedics revive him for the second time.

  She followed him as far as Emergency. Then, as a group of doctors descended upon him, she was left behind. She could do nothing but watch as they hurried him down a long neon-lit corridor and rushed him into surgery.

  The action and hubbub followed him. She stood, not sure what do next, trying to decide if now was the time for her to sit down and shake like a rabbit. A nurse took pity on her. Showed her where to wait and pointed out the coffee machine. And then it was just her. Her alone. Sitting in a beautiful gold ball gown. In a cold sterile hospital ward. Waiting to hear if her father lived or died.

  She sat for hours, occasionally drifting over to the coffee machine, making a cup of the foul brew and watching as it went cold in her numb hand. There was a window in the waiting room that looked out onto an empty carpark and leafless trees. Just as the night began to give way to a thin grey dawn, the surgeon, purple beneath the eyes with tiredness, emerged from the inner recesses of the hospital.

  “He’ll be okay…” The words were the only ones that penetrated Zani’s consciousness. She felt giddy for a moment, but then, with steely resolve, she made herself listen to him “…still in the woods, long way to go…possibility of further surgery…”

  She thanked the man, and he, dressed in bloodstained scrubs, told her how beautiful she looked. She smiled because he seemed to be joking, and then he disappeared back from whence he’d come.

  She wondered hazily where Paul was. Surely he’d want to know how their father was. She fished in her elegant little gold purse for her mobile phone. An officious looking nurse passed by. The woman frowned, pointing to the “No Mobiles” sign on the wall.

  Zani took the lift down to the ground floor and walked out to the carpark, the tired smiles of the staff following her as she went. It was freezing cold. She hadn’t realised how warm the hospital was. The coldness refreshed her and a little of the fuzziness lifted. She dialed Paul, but the call went through to his message bank. She left a message for him then tried his home number. No answer there, either. She wasn’t sure what to do next. Wait, she supposed, until she could see her father. Fang would be fine at Karen’s, and she didn’t want to leave.

  A figure approached, the ground mist swirling around his legs. She blinked in surprise. It was Corbin, dressed in jeans, his hair wet.

  “I came to see how your dad was, to see if you needed anything. Here.” He handed her a bag. “My PA Shelly sent these. She reckoned you were both about the same size and supposed you wouldn’t have been home to change.”

  Tears burned behind her eyes. The stress of the long wait, the awful night, the lack of sleep landed on her. One and then another traitorous tear slid down her cheek.

  “Mon Dieu, Zani,” said Corbin. “Is it your father, did he…”

  “No,” she sobbed.

  “Come here.” He enfolded her in a hug. It was entirely and precisely what she needed. Feeling safe, she let her defences down and cried.

  Afterwards she wasn’t sure how long she stood in his arms in the carpark, but eventually the rush of emotion ended. She felt tired and spent and a little foolish. Corbin had made it quite clear the night before that he wanted nothing more to do with her. Now, instead of keeping a cool distance, thanking him politely for his mercy errand, obviously run out of some sort of guilt, here she was crying all over him.

  Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she sniffed. “I have to go back.”

  “You need to get changed,” Corbin argued gently. “You can spare a minute. Put this stuff on, wash your face and come and have a coffee. The hospital café is open all the
time.”

  “But what if something happens and I’m not there?”

  “I’ll go and tell the nurses where you are. Meet you in the café in five minutes.”

  Too tired to argue, Zani did as he told her. The sight that greeted her in the bathroom mirror was not a pretty one. Her hair was a shambles and her makeup was smeared and ground into her skin. With relief she peeled off the gown and stepped out of the heeled shoes, which left deep red grooves on her feet. The jeans and loose, warm top fitted more or less, and Shelly had even included a pair of new-looking slip-on shoes. They were too large, but Zani was happy. Anything was better than the heels. At the bottom of the bag there was even a toothbrush, still in its packet, and a brand new tube of toothpaste.

  So exhausted that everything had taken on a faintly surreal tinge, but feeling fresher, she shoved the ball gown into the plastic bag with some difficulty. She contemplated leaving the shoes behind, but then couldn’t because they were so expensive, and went to find Corbin.

  He was, as promised, in the café. She plonked down opposite him in a plastic chair, trying to find the energy to smile or say something. There were few people around. Just some tired hospital staff, no doubt finishing off their night shift.

  “You know, I wish we could just start again, pretend we’d never met, never lied, that we had a clean sheet,” she blurted. It was, she supposed, the beginning of an apology, and she waited to see what his response would be.

  Secret Intentions

  Chapter Eleven

  “Don’t, Zani, not now. Everything is too raw,” he said. “You need to concentrate on your father. Worry about us later.”

  Us. Surprise and a little hope blossomed in Zani. She squashed it firmly, sure he hadn’t meant it the way it sounded.

  “I picked up a copy of the paper on the way here. You’ve made the social pages again,” Corbin continued, passing it to her, his tone neutral, no hint of censure in his expression.

  “Oh, God.” She glanced at the page. The photo the paparazzi had taken the night before was plastered across half a page. She looked like she relaxed into the embrace as Sebastian bent her back, but it wasn’t too obvious he had his hand on her breast.

  She read the caption below the photo. “Wedding bells for long-time lovers Count Sebastian of Ledenfeld and Lady Zaniah Best? What will Corbin think!”

  Grimacing, she folded the paper shut. “He’s not my fiancé, or my lover, for that matter. In fact I don’t want to have anything to do with him. Ever again.” She pushed the paper across the melamine table. “Thanks for bringing it for me to see,” she snapped.

  “I just thought you’d want to hear about it from a friend, rather than have some snickering nurse or doctor show it to you. The paper has a readership of 865,000, see it says here in the front.” He pointed helpfully. “And Sebastian is holding your, er, um, your…” He trailed off as he caught Zani’s eye, then rallied bravely. “Well, I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about 865,000 people seeing you being felt up.”

  Zani sighed loudly and leant back in her chair, hooking one ankle over her knee and folding her arms across her chest.

  “To be honest, I’m too tired to care. Sebastian’s had the last word and will now leave me alone. I can put the whole sorry relationship behind me. This…” she gestured to the paper, “…will cause me a great deal of embarrassment down at the sailing club next time I show my face, but that will be it. I should be getting back. It was kind of you to bring me some clothes. Thank Shelly for me and tell her I’ll return them.” She reached for the plastic bag by her feet on the floor.

  “I need to ask you something,” he said, his accent more pronounced than usual.

  She sank back into her chair. “You said you never wanted to see me again. I don’t understand why you’ve come here,” she said.

  “I had some information about your brother, information which made it clear you were involved in selling the computer game to Vivre.”

  “But…”

  “Let me finish. I do not want you to be involved. The person who single-handedly sailed the Vixen through shocking conditions, who is universally respected within the sailing community, who has her own successful boat design business, that person is not who I’d expect to be colluding with her brother to steal games simply to make money. Tell me what happened.”

  “Paul and my father begged me to come into the office and find out if it was you leaking the game secrets. They thought you were trying to make the share price drop so that you could take over the company in a management buyout.” Zani hurried out the words, relieved to finally tell him the whole truth.

  Corbin nodded; tension ebbed out of him, and it was only now when he relaxed that she realized how keyed-up he’d been.

  “So you were protecting your family.”

  She nodded. “I know they’re a pair of greedy fools, but they’re all I have. I promised Mum I’d take care of them. Believe me, I tried everything I could to find another way, but they were desperate.”

  With a slight smile, Corbin leaned back in his chair. “It all makes sense now, why you were so glad to be fired, why you found me at the art gallery.” He shook his head. “You should stick to designing boats and not industrial espionage.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Zani with heartfelt sincerity. They eyed each other, and her heart dipped a little. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach, and a warm flush crept up toward her cheeks.

  Dammit all.

  She’d fallen in love with him.

  “Have you heard from your brother?” he asked. The butterflies abruptly stopped fluttering.

  “No, I’ve been trying to contact him. How can he bugger off somewhere when Dad is in this state? I mean, he’s self-absorbed at the best of times, but honestly…”

  “Paul is gone, Zani. He disappeared last night, and we know he’s the one who leaked the Sunberri secrets to the gamingsecrets blog.”

  Zani sat and stared at him, trying to comprehend exactly what he was saying. The tiredness that surrounded her like a sea mist buzzed distantly in her ear and made it hard to concentrate. Corbin was telling her that Paul had leaked the secrets. It made no sense.

  “Paul? But what…how? No, this isn’t right.” Almost reflexively, she denied it. She lifted a hand and forestalled Corbin as he shook his head and started to disagree. “Look, I read the stuff that appeared on the Internet site, it must have come from someone who knew the game well, like someone on the development team. I know for a fact it can’t have been Paul.”

  “For a fact?” he echoed.

  She took his words to be suspicious and steeled herself to be defensive. But then she caught his eye. He watched her with such tender sympathy that suddenly it was too much and the tears welled again.

  “It wasn’t him, you don’t understand…”

  “I do. I understand completely. Zani, it gets worse.” He leaned forward across the table and reached to her. She ignored the gesture.

  “I just don’t think I can handle any more bad news right now. Dad’s lying upstairs in a coma, and frankly the last two weeks have been the shittiest of my entire life. I failed to help him save his fortune, I pranged my car, I came extremely close to losing the contract of a lifetime, you fired me and I end up in the tabloids, twice. Once being manhandled by possibly the most revolting man in the universe, who I once had the shudderingly awful idea of actually marrying. My perfectly organised life has vanished into thin air. Please don’t tell me any more bad things.”

  Her voice trembled and her tenuous grip on self control wavered. Like a small child, she stuck her fingers in her ears and stared mutinously at Corbin, as two fat tears traced their way down her face.

  “Zani, you need sleep, cherie. Are you sure you can’t leave here, just for a few hours?”

  Zani took her fingers out of her ears and dashed the tears away with the back of her hand.

  “But what if Dad wakes up? What if he wakes up and I’m not here? I might—” She hesitated, unable to ack
nowledge her father’s fragile grip on life, “—miss something. Where is Paul?” she asked plaintively, veering from one subject to another.

  “I don’t know. My private investigator, Karl, has traced him as far as Heathrow. We’re checking flights now.”

  “He should be here, why isn’t he here?” Her voice rose a note. Realising she sounded hysterical, she made a concentrated effort to calm down. The last thing she needed was another bout of crying. All her energy had to focus on her father, and to sort out what had happened to Paul.

  “You know I can’t answer that. Here, I’ll get you something to eat and some tea.”

  She sat and watched as he made his way around the hospital cafeteria with a tray. He looked so out of place, his tanned skin and movie star good looks at odds with the tired, pale people around him. He seemed larger than life, so confident and assured, just when she felt so small and vulnerable. She wanted to lean on his strength. Draw from it to get through whatever was to come. She was so tired of fighting all these battles on her own.

  She drew in a deep breath and let it out gently, marshaling her tattered nerves. Corbin had said there was more bad news. She’d have to hear it. Never one to live in denial, she’d be happier knowing what was going on, having all her cards on the table.

  “I’m sorry.” She smiled waveringly up at Corbin when he returned bearing a tray with croissants and small packets of jam and butter.

  “Fresh from the microwave!” he said, putting a croissant down in front of her with a flourish. The small attempt at humour made her smile. Whatever he had to tell her next, she’d handle it.

  He sat down opposite her and busied himself peeling open the butter and jam, only just keeping a very French sneer off his face at the food.

  “Okay, shoot. I need to know the rest, otherwise you wouldn’t be here,” said Zani.