Ruthless Passion

by Penny Jordan

  For the first time in her life Lucy controlled her emotions—the emotions that urged her to turn on Giles and spill out her anger and pain that he should dare to turn away from her to someone else—and instead listened to the calmer promptings of her brain, promptings that told her that here if she wanted it was an opportunity for her to turn events in her own favour.

  She had never been a strategist, a planner, considering such methods too calculating, too lacking in real emotion, preferring instead to be carried by the impulse of the moment, and the more intense the impulse, the more creditable and important the emotion that lay behind it, but now, a little to her own surprise, she heard herself saying almost soothingly, ‘It sounds most unlike Davina … perhaps it’s the stress of having to take over the business. Look, why don’t you sit down, Giles, and I’ll make us both a cup of coffee?’

  She saw the surprise in his eyes; the way he blinked and looked almost uncertainly at her before obeying her.

  ‘I’m sure once she’s had time to think things over Davina will realise that she ought to have consulted you first,’ she added as she made the coffee.

  ‘I still can’t believe what she’s done,’ Giles complained. ‘This … this … this thing she’s produced … She must be insane if she really thinks anyone would accept these kind of terms. I applaud her loyalty to the workforce and naturally want the best for them, but she can’t actually expect anyone to agree to keep on the entire workforce for a minimum period of three years.

  ‘No one would ever agree to anything like that. Of course people are going to lose their jobs. That’s a fact of life … and as for including in the terms a commitment on the part of the purchasing company to provide a workplace crèche with qualified staff … as well as guaranteeing a minimum wage with a proper salary scale …

  ‘I can’t believe she’s actually done this … prejudicing everything. She’s going to make herself … Carey’s … all of us an utter laughing-stock. God, I bet Jardine can’t wait to spread it all round the City. And of course I’ll be the one held responsible. Who the hell is going to hire me when it gets round that I let her jeopardise what jobs could be saved for a foolhardy scheme?’

  ‘Here’s your coffee,’ Lucy soothed him.

  He stopped speaking and looked up at her, frowning a little, staring at her so that she suddenly remembered her earlier tears and what a mess she must look. Her appearance, normally so vitally important to her, her defence, her protection against the world, had been forgotten in her emotional surge of panic at seeing Giles’s precious lawn destroyed—or, rather, in fearing that Giles himself no longer cared about his lawn … or her.

  ‘Giles, the lawn … that tree,’ she asked him. ‘What …?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I should have told you,’ he apologised. He was, she saw, looking uncomfortable, his face flushing slightly, his shoulders hunching so that he was looking away from her when he told her gruffly, ‘I bought it for Nicholas. It’s a proper tree … and I thought …’

  Lucy stood completely still. She saw him turn round to look at her and there wasn’t time for her to hide what she was feeling.

  Immediately Giles stood up, his hand resting awkwardly on her shoulder, as though he wasn’t sure whether he should touch her or not. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I should have said something … asked you first. It was an impulse … I just thought … a tree … well, it’s something that goes on forever, isn’t it? It will always be there, even when we’re not. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Lucy … to cause you pain.’

  He could feel the rigidity of her body beneath his hand, her shoulder bones so sharply defined that there seemed to be barely any flesh covering them at all. She had always been slender; now she was almost thin. Unexpectedly a wave of protective tender love filled him.

  ‘Look, I’ll tell them to take it away,’ he began huskily. ‘I should never—’

  ‘No … no. Leave it. You … you did the right thing,’ Lucy told him.

  He could see that she was fighting not to cry. Lucy, who had always given way to tears as easily and as naturally as a child. And for some reason seeing her fighting them back now hurt him unbearably. He wanted to hold her, to protect her, to tell her that everything was all right, that he would make everything all right, but how could he, when he was the cause of so much of her pain?

  ‘I just … I just wanted to do something … to show him that he wasn’t forgotten,’ he told her unsteadily, groping for the words to make her understand what had motivated him and aching with the knowledge that once such words, such care would not have been necessary, because she would have known.

  ‘Oh, Giles.’

  The emotion in her voice made him look at her. There was no anger there, no familiar warning of the kind of temperamental outburst he had been expecting, and when he looked at her he saw that although her eyes were bright with tears they were free of acrimony and rejection.

  ‘Sometimes I feel that I’m the only person who can remember that he ever lived. As though no one else wants to remember.’ The pain in her voice caught at his heart, tearing it like sharp thorns. ‘No one ever says his name … talks about him.’

  He could hear in her voice all that she was feeling, including her own shock that she should actually be telling him what she felt, and again he was filled with a sense of having let her down; of having failed to recognise and meet her most basic need.

  How had it happened that he had been so blind to what she was feeling? Why had he relied on others to tell him what to say, how to behave? Why hadn’t they been able to share their grief and guilt over the death of their child? They had shared in his conception; why hadn’t they been able to share in his loss?

  ‘It wasn’t true that I didn’t want him,’ Lucy told him huskily. ‘I was afraid, that was all … afraid.’

  ‘I know,’ Giles told her, and as he said it he knew that it was the truth. He raised his head and looked through the kitchen window.

  The men had gone. The tree stood close to its supporting stake as though it was a little afraid … uncertain of its new environment; of its role. It was young and vulnerable and in need of support to help it grow and develop its own strength, just as everything and everyone vulnerable needed support.

  ‘What is it?’ Lucy asked him as he took hold of her hand and drew her towards the back door, following him nevertheless.

  She frowned a little uncertainly as he guided her over to the tree, her frown deepening as he reached out and touched it almost as though he was stroking it. Its bark was thin and tender and hadn’t hardened into a protective barrier as yet. She touched it herself, tentatively, not really sure why she was doing so. It felt warm, like living flesh; disconcerted, she stared at Giles.

  ‘It needs our love,’ he told her soberly. ‘To help it grow, to protect and support it.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed shakily. Her eyes stung with tears of pain and loss, but now unexpectedly there was something else as well.

  Knowledge … hope … awareness … love? She wasn’t sure. But what she did know suddenly was that she wasn’t going to make it easy for Davina to take Giles away from her, not any more, and with that knowledge came a sudden surge of energy and purposefulness.

  * * *

  Tiredly Davina stripped off her suit. After the elation of having gained the upper hand, of having taken control of the meeting and used to her own advantage the element of surprise she had deliberately contrived had come a draining exhaustion.

  As she pulled on her top and jeans she wondered how long it would take Giles to get over his chagrin and shock. After the meeting he had followed her over to her car, barely able to control what he was feeling.

  ‘Davina, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he had demanded bitterly.

  As she had turned to smile calmly at him she had seen that his face was flushed with temper and disbelief. He had looked more like a furious little boy than an adult man, and irritatingly she had found herself contrasting his reaction, his
demeanour, to that of Saul Jardine.

  That he had been equally if not more annoyed and outraged by what had happened she had had no doubt, but he had concealed it, controlled it, and was no doubt even now using every one of the formidable weapons of intelligence and instinct he possessed to find some way of outmanoeuvring her. When he did, would she be strong enough to match him?

  Giles had still been waiting for her to respond to his angry demand.

  ‘I rather thought I was about to drive home, Giles,’ she had told him pleasantly.

  He had made a dismissive, baffled gesture and had said impatiently, ‘No, I didn’t mean now … I meant in the bank. That schedule.’ He had stopped speaking, struggling to find the right words. ‘You just don’t do things like that. We aren’t in a position to make those kinds of demands. Hell, Davina, you ought to be down on your knees thanking God that someone wants to buy you out at all.’

  ‘Who says so? Saul Jardine?’ she had asked him. It had been plain from the look he had given her that Giles had thought she had taken leave of her senses. ‘What do you think of Jardine, Giles?’ she had asked, changing tack, knowing it was unfair to vent her feelings on poor Giles.

  ‘He’s obviously a skilled negotiator,’ Giles had told her shortly. ‘And he’s come in to get Carey’s as quietly and for as little as he can. It won’t do any good trying to antagonise him, Davina. That type doesn’t play those kinds of games—’

  ‘Mm. Would you say he held a fairly high position in his organisation?’ Davina had seen the way Giles reacted to her cutting across the lecture he had been about to deliver, but she wasn’t in the mood to be tactful and indulgent.

  ‘According to Philip, he’s Sir Alex’s second-in-command,’ Giles told her stiffly.

  ‘A rather important position?’ she had questioned.

  ‘A very important position,’ Giles had corrected her.

  ‘Odd, then, surely, that he should come here to negotiate such a comparatively minor acquisition?’

  ‘Odd … what do you mean?’

  Wryly she had tried to explain. ‘I mean, Giles, that I should like to know exactly why this Sir Alex wants to acquire Carey’s, and if the acquisition isn’t somehow important to him, then why send someone like Saul Jardine to negotiate it for him?’

  ‘Because that’s his job,’ Giles had told her huffily.

  Davina had laughed then. ‘Is it?’ she had asked him, but she wasn’t laughing now, she acknowledged soberly as she looked out into the garden.

  As she had discovered a long, long time ago, pulling out weeds was an extremely therapeutic task and one that was extremely good for getting rid of unwanted tension.

  The sky had become overcast and was threatening rain but she didn’t let that put her off. Grimly she kneeled down at the end of one long bed and started working.

  There was nothing else she could do for Carey’s now other than to wait, to wait and hope that, whatever the reason this Sir Alex wanted Carey’s, it was important enough to him to accept her terms.

  And if it wasn’t?

  She frowned as she searched beneath the surface of the soil for the tap-root of a spreading piece of buttercup.

  If it wasn’t, no doubt Giles and Philip Taylor would enjoy underlining to her how foolishly she had behaved.

  * * *

  Saul had glanced briefly through the document Davina had handed him during the meeting, but now he had time to assess and study it thoroughly he was torn between amazement and disbelief that she could actually imagine, with the state the company was in, that any buyer would be prepared to accept such terms.

  He noticed absently how well the document was typed, and without the advantage of a self-correcting word processor; the wording was concise and exact, the grammar elegantly correct and the punctuation displaying an unexpected flair for the dramatic. Didn’t she realise that no one used that kind of punctuation any more, or had she known but still chosen to do so? He frowned a little.

  She worried him, irritated him, challenged him in some extraordinary way. Every time he thought he had her correctly assessed she did something to show him that he was wrong.

  Take that ridiculous suit, for instance. It couldn’t possibly be that she hadn’t known how inappropriate it was. So why had she worn it … defiance … bravado … an odd sense of humour? Certainly not out of ignorance or carelessness—the document she had given him proved that.

  She must know surely that neither Alex nor anyone else would accept those kind of terms: guarantee employment for three years for the entire workforce, plus a complete overhaul of their working conditions and practices, the same practices which had led his sister to tell him privately that she thought Carey’s was guilty of negligence … those same practices instituted by her own husband; crèche facilities; job sharing. Alex would have laughed in her face.

  There was one thing he wouldn’t laugh at, though, and that was being told that there would be a delay in getting hold of Carey’s.

  Alex was not and never had been a patient man. What he wanted he wanted and expected to get now, and he wasn’t inclined to be indulgent towards those who opposed him in any way.

  Of course, she must know that she had no real chance of getting any of her terms accepted. All Alex had to do was simply wait.

  It wouldn’t be long before the bank, already showing signs of panic, reacted to Carey’s problems by forcing Davina James either into bankruptcy or a break-up sale, and when that moment came Alex would be able to get the company for as low a price as he chose to offer. And, knowing Alex as he did, Saul knew that he would not be inclined to be generous. Far from it. He hated being thwarted by anyone, and most especially by a woman. He would enjoy humiliating Davina James, forcing her to acknowledge his supremacy.

  Saul wondered why that knowledge irritated him so much, stirring him to anger against himself for not outmanoeuvring Davina James in the first place, and against her for being stupid enough to think she could ever force someone like Alex to even listen to her outrageous terms.

  It wasn’t up to him to make her see sense, he decided. If she didn’t have the sense to see what was going to happen …

  He frowned, reminding himself that he had to get this deal completed quickly, that Alex was not going to accept her ridiculous demands, and that meant getting Davina James to accept.

  When he rang Carey’s he was told that Davina wasn’t there. He hesitated, drumming his fingers on Christie’s kitchen table while he debated what to do.

  Surprise was always a good advantage to have, he told himself, as Davina herself had proved this morning. If he rang her at home she might refuse to see him. She might refuse anyway, especially if she was with her lover. Not that there had been anything lover-like between them this morning.

  * * *

  Davina was too far away from the front of the house to hear the sound of Saul’s car.

  When his knock on the front door didn’t bring any response Saul acted on instinct and walked around to the back of the house.

  Davina was kneeling with her back to him at the other end of the garden. She neither heard nor saw his approach, so that his cool, ‘You’ve missed a piece of chickweed here,’ made her body jerk reflexively in fierce shock.

  Anger made her eyes darker, her face and bare arms burned hotly with the force of it, but she had no self-consciousness about her appearance, or the fact that a recent shower had left her hair curling damply against her skin, Saul observed wryly as she stood up challengingly, her stance almost touchingly at odds with her appearance.

  For a moment she could almost have been a young girl, the exposed curve of her shoulder oddly vulnerable. But she wasn’t a girl, she was a woman, and an extremely irritating one as well.

  ‘I knew Carey’s wasn’t exactly busy,’ he drawled, carefully watching her, ‘but—’

  ‘What are you doing here, Mr Jardine?’ Davina interrupted him coolly. ‘I thought you said it would take some time to obtain your employer’s reactions to my prop
osals and terms of sale.’

  ‘I lied,’ Saul told her calmly.

  Just for a moment he allowed himself to enjoy the faint flicker of reaction that crossed her face.

  ‘I already know what Alex’s reaction will be,’ he continued. ‘He’ll wonder why your advisers haven’t had you certified,’ he told her pleasantly. ‘Look, what is it that you really want?’ he asked her. ‘You must know as well as I do that no one would accept these terms. I appreciate that this is a new world for you and that you’re enjoying playing in it—’

  ‘I am not playing, Mr Jardine,’ Davina told him fiercely. ‘I leave that to you and your kind.’

  Her eyes flashed her contempt, and to his own surprise Saul actually felt himself reacting to it. Just in time he controlled his instinctive reaction to that contempt.

  ‘What I want is contained in the terms I’ve written down for you.’

  ‘Security for your employees. Nothing for yourself.’ Now it was his turn to let his contempt, his disbelief show. ‘Come off it. No one is that altruistic!’

  ‘I don’t consider it as altruism, Mr Jardine,’ Davina told him grimly. ‘I call it conscience.’

  Saul stared at her.

  ‘What’s wrong? Haven’t you ever heard of it before?’ she asked him bitterly. ‘First my father and then my husband took advantage of the people who work for Carey’s. Maybe while they were alive I couldn’t have done anything about it. But I could have tried and I didn’t. I accepted my father’s and then my husband’s ruling that what went on at Carey’s had nothing to do with me. Now it has everything to do with me, and if I can’t right past wrongs, then at least I can ensure that they aren’t continued. I have realised that people are more important than possessions; than wealth, or ambition. People matter, all of them, and if you deny them the right to that importance then you take away from them one of their most basic human rights; you demean and devalue them, and in doing so you demean and devalue yourself as well.’