Ruthless Passion

by Penny Jordan

  A fact that was brought sharply and sickeningly home to her one afternoon when she returned home to discover that her flat had been broken into. There was little doubt that whoever had done it had probably been after drugs, the police told her. As a doctor, she was an obvious target. It had probably been out of sheer frustration that they had wrecked the place, destroying her furniture. The items they had stolen, her television, her clock and various other small things, would be sold to buy the drugs they had not been able to find in the flat.

  Christie had always considered herself to be a strong person, not given to emotional weakness, but when she walked into Cathy’s room and saw what had been done the fear that chilled her totally overwhelmed her. As she looked at Cathy’s bed, its quilt torn, the mattress gaping open from the jagged knife wounds ripped into it, all she had been able to see was Cathy lying on that bed …

  It was the hardest decision she had ever had to make, far, far harder than deciding not to abort her child, but for Cathy’s sake she had to make it.

  When she told the other partners that she was leaving they accepted her decision philosophically. ‘City practice is no place for anyone with small children,’ she was told gruffly by the senior partner.

  Tears burned her eyes, but she refused to shed them. One half of her felt as though she was a deserter, a traitor, as though in leaving she was abandoning those who needed her. She felt she owed them a responsibility, a duty.

  But she owed Cathy those as well. What if Cathy had been in the flat when it was broken into? The thought turned Christie cold with fear, and yet she ached inside with the knowledge that she was turning her back on people who needed her.

  She had already found a new partnership; this time in the country, somewhere quiet and safe where Cathy could grow up enjoying the kind of environment that every child should have.

  Oddly, for all the differences between them, it was Saul who seemed to understand best what she was going through, how torn she was between her desire to help those who had the most need of her and her desire to protect her child.

  ‘You are doing the right thing,’ he told her quietly, and then added with a sideways smile, ‘Cheer up. There’s bound to be some cause for you to champion, even in the depths of rural Cheshire. How about starting up a refuge for abandoned tractors?’

  He had made her laugh, of course; that at least had been something they had always shared: their sense of humour.

  * * *

  With a start Christie realised that the plane had started to descend. It wasn’t like her to dwell on the past, and, as she had soon discovered, poverty and deprivation were not restricted merely to the city. Look at the way, for instance, that Carey’s had so flagrantly broken the safety laws, the way they had blackmailed the workforce into accepting criminally low wages, the way that Gregory James had somehow managed to use his influence and position to squash the attempt she had made to set up an inquiry into the incidence of contact dermatitis among his employees.

  She frowned as she reached for her hand luggage. She had become increasingly disenchanted over the last few years with the large drug companies and the methods they employed to influence the medical profession to use their products, products in some cases which had the potential to cause more harm to certain patients than good.

  The drug companies were supported by a very powerful government lobby, and she, as a doctor, did not believe that their motives came anywhere near being altruistic enough. ‘Profits before patients’—that was the title of the speech she was to give the small group of doctors attending the conference who supported her beliefs. With luck they might just make it into one of the local papers. The dailies would, of course, be dominated by revelations about the promises of new wonder drugs which the drug companies would make use of the conference to announce.

  The plane touched down. Christie waited until nearly everyone was off before vacating her seat and then smilingly thanked the stewardess as she got off.

  The airport building was packed, a large proportion of her fellow travellers quite obviously other delegates. She sighed a little as she saw the queue for the taxi rank but joined it nevertheless.

  As she did so she was aware of the man joining the queue behind her, catching sight of him out of the corner of her eye and instantly aware of his height and of the confident, very male way in which he moved.

  A discreet glance over her shoulder, in a pretence of checking the heel of her shoe, gave her the opportunity for a more thorough look. Good-looking as well, somewhere in his mid to late thirties, she would guess. Apparently unaware of her subtle scrutiny, he was glancing at his watch, frowning slightly. Obviously a man in a hurry. A wealthy man, to judge from his clothes. Somehow she did not think he was a doctor, although she had no idea why she should think that.

  As she turned back to face the head of the queue she amused herself by imagining how he might look without those expensive clothes. His hair was the colour of warm toast, apart from that striking blond streak at the front. Would his body hair be the same colour? Would it be soft, in toast-coloured fuzzy curls, or sleek to his torso, or even perhaps slightly wiry and abrasive to the touch?

  She favoured the first, and her mouth curled into amused sensuality at the direction of her own thoughts. Well, why not? Women were as at liberty as men to entertain themselves by discreetly mentally stripping an attractive member of the opposite sex. Men, after all, did it all the time. But not just for pleasure. There was a sense of power as well in what she was doing, and with it an awareness of the darker side of human nature, especially male human nature.

  Quickly she diverted her thoughts to other less emotive channels. Thankfully the queue was quickly growing shorter. Soon it would be her turn, but when it was, to her fury, the taxi driver ignored her, pulling up to the man behind her, inviting, ‘Jump in, sir.’

  ‘I think this lady was before me.’ His voice was pleasantly pitched, his English accentless and easy, and yet she was immediately aware that it was not his first language.

  The taxi driver was glowering, no doubt recognising that his preferred passenger was a good deal more likely to tip generously than she was herself. Another few seconds and he would ignore them both, Christie realised.

  ‘Perhaps we could share the taxi,’ she suggested quickly. ‘I’m heading for a medical conference in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Me too.’ They smiled at one another, and then he reached past Christie to open the door for her. Unlike her, he had a suitcase as well as a small piece of hand luggage. The raincoat he had over his suit swung open as he moved and she saw the label—German. She gave him a swift appraising look, admitting a small frisson of surprise.

  He did not look German, but there was a Lufthansa tag on his luggage. Derisively she asked herself how a German was supposed to look: all Teutonic stiffness and blue eyes? Scoffing at her own outdated preconceptions, she got into the cab.

  As he followed her into the taxi and closed the door he suggested, ‘Perhaps we should introduce ourselves? I am Leo, and you?’

  Leo what? Christie wondered idly as she gave him her own name. Was it a German custom to only introduce oneself by one’s Christian name?

  ‘Are you familiar with Edinburgh and the conference centre?’ he asked her as the taxi set off.

  Christie shook her head. ‘Are you?’

  ‘I have visited Edinburgh before, but it was several years ago. The conference centre is new since then, I think. You are a doctor … a chemist … a scientist?’ he questioned.

  Christie liked the way he did not automatically assume, as so many men would have done, that she was either a secretary or someone’s PA. She liked the fact that he had automatically conferred on her the status of a qualified professional.

  ‘A doctor,’ she told him. ‘And you?’

  He paused fractionally and then told her. ‘A chemist.’ As he glanced out of the window at the traffic Leo wondered why he had felt it necessary to withhold from her both his name and his true positio
n. As a doctor, she was bound to have heard of Hessler Chemie, and once the conference was under way she could not avoid discovering his connection with the corporation. So why try to separate himself from it? Because he wanted her to accept him, to judge him as himself rather than as the head of Hessler Chemie.

  He had only met her five minutes ago. What importance could her opinion of him possibly have? He did not know. He only knew that it would be important, and he knew that as intuitively as he knew that if he had told her who he really was she would have immediately withdrawn from him. He had no idea why or how he should sense that, he only knew that he did.

  She was a very attractive woman, stunningly vibrant and alive, her dark hair thickly glossy, her body firm but feminine, not beautiful in the strict sense, perhaps, but there was something very compelling about her, a very real and true sensuality which he had noticed the moment he saw her.

  He had also noticed that quick assessing sexual scrutiny she had given him. Had she liked what she had seen? Inwardly he mocked himself for his susceptibility.

  She too was now looking out of the opposite window. He glanced quickly at her. There was nothing socially contrived or deliberate about her; rather she had a natural fresh earthiness. He sensed that she was a woman who knew how to enjoy and appreciate the pleasure of her own body; that as a lover she would give herself generously and demand equal generosity in return.

  As a lover? Or as his lover?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘NO … no.’

  Davina sat up in bed, shivering as she tried to control the fine tremor of fear convulsing her body, the intensity of the dream that had woken her too real to be easily dismissed.

  She hugged her arms around herself and glanced at the alarm clock beside the bed, groaning as she realised how early it was and how unlikely that she would be able to go back to sleep.

  She got out of bed, her mood lightening briefly with wry self-mockery as she caught sight of herself in the dressing-table mirror. The nightshirt she was wearing was probably too young for her, too juvenile, and no doubt it was the fact that her eyes were still blurred with sleep that gave her that brief sense of déjà vu, of stepping back in time and momentarily seeing in the mirror a much younger reflection of herself, her hair tousled and hanging down her back, its normal smooth neatness untidily ruffled by her disturbed night’s sleep, her legs looking oddly coltish and slender beneath the brief cotton shirt.

  As she pushed back the curtains and studied the clear blue sky she was briefly reminded of another morning, another bedroom, another Davina standing in front of the window wearing a man’s shirt, Matt’s shirt, her body bare beneath the faded chambray cloth, her hair tousled not from her dreams but from Matt’s lovemaking.

  She remembered how Matt had come up behind her, sliding his arms around her, pulling her back against his body, kissing the nape of her neck and then her shoulder, slowly turning her round to face him as he felt her body’s response to him.

  She shivered, suddenly aware of the disconcerting ache of need she could feel now, knowing that it had been caused not by her memories of that early morning lovemaking but by the darker forces of her subconscious thoughts and the dreams they had caused her. Dreams in which she had been following Matt as he walked down a narrow path ahead of her, oblivious to her presence, to her voice as she called out to him. And, no matter how fast she had walked, the distance between them only seemed to increase. She had felt panic and fear, dismay, loneliness, grief and anger all rolled into one as she fought to keep up with him, to make him turn round and see her, to make him wait for her, and then suddenly he had stopped. Only when he turned round it hadn’t been Matt’s face she had seen but that of a stranger … the stranger, she acknowledged tensely as she stepped back from the window.

  As she went downstairs to make herself a coffee she told herself that it was probably not as illogical as she had first imagined for her to dream about him. After all, it had been a shock to walk round that corner and into him, and what woman these days could view that kind of experience with equanimity? Her sex was only just beginning to discover that real freedom of choice, real parity in life, real equality was as much an illusion as it had always been.

  A woman might now technically be able to achieve the highest academic, political and professional echelons there were, but they were not free to walk in safety along their city streets; they were not free to drive with confidence and security from one end of the country to the other; they were not free to open the door to the male stranger who knocked on it; so was it really any wonder that that small and unimportant encounter should have had such an intense effect upon her?

  These days a woman had to treat any man who was a stranger, and often many of those who weren’t, with suspicion and caution, and if she didn’t … If she didn’t, the world of men ruled that she must accept that she had voluntarily contributed to any violation of her home, her privacy and her body.

  But the frisson of sensation she had felt in her dream when the man turned round and it wasn’t Matt had not been that kind of fear. There had been apprehension, yes, but it had been a sensual, sexual apprehension, a dangerous spiralling excitement that had plunged her sharply from the anxiety of wanting Matt to turn round and see her and to wait for her to one of acutely searing need combined with an equally searing resentment of that need and of the man who had caused it.

  The coffee was ready. She breathed in deeply, firmly switching her mind to other and far more important matters; she was almost out of coffee and she had other shopping to do. She wanted to make an appointment with a local estate agent with a view to getting the house valued and up for sale; it was much too large for her to live in alone, and although she would miss her garden she would not miss the house itself, despite the fact that she had lived in it all her life.

  At the back of her mind was the thought that perhaps she could use whatever money there might be left over, after she had bought herself something smaller, to keep the company going for a little while longer. She tried not to let herself dwell on the fact that such funds might be needed to cover the redundancy monies due to Carey’s employees if she had to cease business. The bank manager and Giles had both pointed out to her that, if the company went into liquidation, no such payments would be due.

  Gregory had always been very careful about preserving his own finances, the bank manager had told her; although Carey’s had borrowed a good deal of money from the bank, Gregory had somehow or other managed to persuade his predecessor that it wasn’t necessary for Gregory to give any personal guarantees as a director to secure this borrowing, and Davina suspected that Philip Taylor had had a rather begrudging admiration for Gregory’s financial far-sightedness.

  It was a view she did not share. Gregory might not have broken any actual law, but he had broken nearly every moral law there was, and she felt almost as guilty by association as though she had known about it and encouraged him to do so.

  ‘It’s just sensible and cautious business practice,’ Giles had told her uncomfortably when she had initially expressed her shock and disgust, and she had begun to perceive then that perhaps men, even the best of them, operated within a different framework of ethics from her own sex.

  She had recently read a brief article in one of the Sunday papers propounding the theory that men were goal- and achievement-orientated, while women were people- and emotion-orientated.

  Certainly neither the bank manager nor even Giles seemed to share her view that the most disturbing consequence of Carey’s going bankrupt would be the effect it would have on its employees.

  No company these days was in a position to guarantee its workforce long-term employment, Giles had told her when she had confided to him her concern. It was their investors, their shareholders, their competitors and the City who mattered.

  Davina had very little knowledge of the business world and how it worked, he had added gently, and, although she had said nothing, she had been irritated by his attitude. His ar
ea was personnel, and surely he should have expressed a more sympathetic attitude, although Davina had to concede that he was sadly right in his assessment.

  She was intelligent enough to perceive that if she wished to be taken seriously, her view of what was important given respect and attention, she must learn to adapt her arguments so that she could put forward her viewpoint in such a way that it would not receive the instant dismissal, the derision almost, she had seen so clearly in the bank manager’s attitude towards her.

  Because it was an issue that was so important to her, and because she did not intend to allow anyone to bully her or confuse her into doing something that went against her own moral codes, she had gritted her teeth and done what she now told herself she ought to have had the sense and the courage to do years before: she had insisted on learning everything there was to learn about Carey’s; about the way it was run; about the way it was financed; about the way its products were sold and distributed, the way they were presented to the members of the medical profession who used them; and what had initially shocked her more than anything else, after her discovery of how badly Gregory had treated their employees, had been the realisation that there had been so little spent on research and development of new drugs.

  Gregory, her father even, must have known that once the renewed patent ran out on their market-leading heart drug their profits would drop sharply, but it was obvious to her that even during her father’s lifetime little or no attempt had been made to invest those profits in research to preserve the company’s future.

  It was true there was a laboratory, but, as Giles had been forced to admit to her, it was hardly up to the standard of a second-rate university’s and none of the work carried out in it could ever have led to the production of a new market leader.

  Her father had known that and so had Gregory. But why had that happened? Her father had been a student of medicine, surely educated by his father to take full advantage of the benefits of the drug he himself had discovered almost by accident, and to lead Carey’s into the new age of modern drugs?