Ruthless Passion

by Penny Jordan

  He swayed slightly and leaned against the body of the car. When he touched his forehead it was drenched in sweat, his heart was pounding as though he had been running hard, his pulse jumping unevenly, his muscles leaden and exhausted, but beneath all that he could still feel the echo of that hot, savage surge of physical desire.

  It wasn’t just that she had fooled him … deceived him … not even that her duplicity had destroyed something within him, some small frail thread of hope that there were, after all, people to whom other things mattered far more than personal material gain and advancement. There was also the knowledge that now it was going to be that much harder, take that much longer to complete this self-imposed final duty to Alex.

  His job, Alex’s threats: these were things he could walk away from; he was a single man and could if need be live simply enough—his flat, his investments would realise enough to see both Josey and Tom through their education—so even if Alex managed to get every door, every job barred to him he would still survive. In that sense there was nothing to stop him from simply walking away now, from telling Alex that he had had enough. So why couldn’t he do so? Was he, after all, still walking in his father’s shadow, still feeling that he must match some alien yardstick, fulfil some unwanted and unsatisfying code that wasn’t even his?

  With or without him, Alex would fight now to get Carey’s. He hated any kind of opposition and knowing that Hessler Chemie was also after Carey’s would only increase Alex’s determination to buy them out. But once he had done so he would exact his revenge for having been made to fight. Alex was not a man who had ever been generous in victory. So why not simply walk away and leave Davina James to the fate she deserved, the fate she had invited? Was it because her deceit had been so convincing that, against his will and regardless of the fact that it was not his concern, he was aware of the truth of what she had said to him: that Carey’s wasn’t just a company, it was people, people who needed jobs, the income, the purpose that working for the company gave them?

  Why should he care? All over the country there were hundreds, thousands of companies like Carey’s disappearing every year, thousands of people in the same situation Davina James had claimed so passionately she was going to resist. Why should he care now … suffer now, when he never had done so before?

  His whole body, his emotions, his very soul felt as though they had been left raw and bleeding and vulnerable to the pain of that unfamiliar exposure.

  He could feel the emotions building up inside him: anger, panic, fear; the sense of being alone and lost in a world that was unfamiliar and without any signposts for him to follow. The guiding light that had been his father’s ambitions for him had gone and there was, he recognised bleakly, nothing he had to put in its place.

  He got back in his car and switched on the engine. He had no stomach left for the battle which lay ahead, a battle he knew Alex would expect that he win on his behalf.

  As he drove towards Christie’s he acknowledged the irony of the fact that it had taken one small female human being to give him the two polar extremes between which his life was now stretched.

  First there had been his anger, his resentment, his awareness that in putting the needs of others so clearly above her own she was underlining for him the discontent and alienation he was experiencing with his own life, and the way he had used it; and then, while he was still trying to come to terms with that and with his own awe and envy of her values, she had shown him that all he had begun to believe in and hope for was not only a sham but a deliberately contrived deceit, and as for that lie that her father and von Hessler’s had been friends … she had looked as shocked by it as he had felt, so much so that he had thought for a second that she might actually rescind her claim, but she had not even had the honesty to do that.

  * * *

  She should not have said anything to Saul Jardine about her father and Leo’s knowing one another, Davina acknowledged. That had been a stupid, dangerous thing to do, but his allegation that she was deliberately playing Leo off against him had shocked her so much that she had instinctively tried to defend herself.

  It was just as well that he had not believed her. She gnawed on her bottom lip. Ought she to warn Leo? It was too late to ring him now, but she could telephone him first thing in the morning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  LEO frowned as he listened to Davina’s anxious voice, relating what had happened the previous evening.

  His frown deepened when she told him how, in a moment of unguarded anger, she had defended herself from Saul’s accusations by telling him that their fathers had been friends and that Leo’s visit had been a personal one.

  ‘He didn’t believe me,’ she added. ‘I’m sorry, Leo, I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he assured her.

  ‘I haven’t been able to find anything in Dad’s papers either, but I’m sure you’re right and that they did know one another; that for some reason my father was able to blackmail yours into giving him that information.’ She shivered a little. ‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ she told Leo. ‘I don’t think now that I could bring myself to live with him; speak to him even. I’m glad now that he never loved me and that I never loved him.’

  ‘Yes, I know how you feel,’ Leo agreed sombrely, and Davina knew that he did.

  * * *

  Christie lifted her head tiredly from her paperwork when the phone rang. She hadn’t slept well and it showed: there were dark circles beneath her eyes, the skin was drawn tight against her cheekbones and jaw, and when she had looked in the mirror the face looking back at her had been unfamiliarly strained and tense.

  Cathy had already gone to school—another mother had picked her up earlier—and Christie wasn’t due in her surgery until after lunch.

  This was no way to spend her precious time off, she warned herself as she got up to answer the phone.

  She had no hope that it might be Leo. Why should he want to get in touch with her, after all? To explain why he had lied to her? He had had his chance to do that in Edinburgh, and besides, what difference would knowing the reasons make? They would not alter the facts.

  And the facts were that Leo von Hessler inhabited a different world from hers, a world she could never inhabit without being sickened and stifled by its—to her—contaminated values, even if he should ask her to share it with him.

  And just as she knew she could not give up the way she wanted to live, the things she believed in, she knew that neither could he. No matter how in tune, how close she had felt they were during those few hours they had shared together, she must not forget that for him that closeness had simply been a fiction.

  He lived by other values than hers, other needs, and if seeing him so unexpectedly at the Grosvenor had stirred up aches and desires, emotionally based as well as physical, well, then, it was up to her to remind herself of reality.

  Even if he had loved her, wanted her, they could not be together. It wasn’t so much his actual wealth that separated them as the way it had been earned, the fact that he was obviously content and, for all she knew, proud to be at the head of his vast empire.

  She picked up the receiver and said the number, and then after listening to the voice at the other end she handed the receiver over to Saul.

  ‘It’s for you,’ she told him.

  She had been reading a book last night when Saul returned from seeing Davina James, or, rather, she had been pretending to do so. In reality she had been too anxious about the anger Saul had displayed before he had left to concentrate on anything other than worrying about what he might be doing. She had never seen her brother react like that before, no matter what the provocation.

  He had seemed calmer when he returned, but it hadn’t been a peaceful calm, rather a drained, empty one. She hadn’t tried to question him, sensing that he needed some time to distance himself from what had happened.

  She had already guessed that acquiring Carey’s must be important to Alex for him to have s
ent Saul to negotiate the deal. As far as she could see, there was no reason why either Alex or Leo should be so anxious to acquire such a run-down company, and she frowned a little as she walked out of the kitchen, leaving Saul to speak in privacy.

  She had become settled in this small rural part of the world, and initially when Saul had told her that Alex wanted to acquire Carey’s she had only thought that at last there might be a chance for those who worked for the company to obtain more security and better working conditions, but now, as she thought about the size and power of an organisation like Hessler’s, she wondered uneasily how its potential involvement would affect their lives.

  More jobs, better jobs, better working conditions—that was one side of it, the best side; the other …

  And that was something else Leo had not told her. He had known she lived here, she had mentioned it to him, but he had said nothing about Carey’s, nothing about visiting Davina James, when he must have already planned that visit.

  Saul’s only comment when he had returned last night had been a bitter, ‘She tried to tell me that von Hessler’s visit was purely social; that their fathers were old friends.’

  ‘Well, maybe they were,’ she had tried to reason. ‘After all, they were both involved in the same industry.’

  ‘And at completely opposite ends of it,’ Saul had derided.

  * * *

  ‘Saul … I’m glad I’ve managed to catch you in. Got everything tied up there now, have you?’

  Saul wasn’t deceived by Alex’s genial tone. ‘Not yet,’ he told him crisply.

  ‘I see. Now, I hope things aren’t going to be difficult. You know how important speed and secrecy are with this one, Saul.’

  Now the geniality had been overlaid by a terser, slightly hectoring tone. Saul ignored it. He had long, long ago ceased to be afraid of Alex; Alex was a bully and like all bullies he enjoyed his power if you let him. ‘It seems that someone else is also interested in acquiring Carey’s,’ Saul told him.

  ‘Someone else? That’s impossible. Unless you’ve been criminally careless. I hope you haven’t done anything foolish, Saul. It doesn’t pay to try to be too clever, you know. I hope I don’t have to remind you that I can destroy you as easily as I made you. Without the Davidson Corporation—’

  ‘Without the Davidson Corporation I’d survive somehow,’ Saul told him tersely. ‘But it isn’t me who’s been careless, Alex. I should look a little closer to home, if I were you … or rather a little closer to the friend whose indiscreet whispers led you to want Carey’s in the first place. Hessler Chemie are after Carey’s,’ he told him.

  ‘Hessler Chemie?’ He could hear Alex’s shock. ‘The pharmaceutical people? But that’s impossible.’

  ‘Leo von Hessler himself has been down here to see Davina James,’ Saul told him grimly.

  There was a small pause, and Saul had the satisfaction of knowing that he had caught Alex off guard.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Alex snapped eventually. ‘What possible use would Carey’s be to Hessler’s?’

  ‘Much the same as it would be to you, I imagine,’ Saul told him drily.

  There was another pause.

  ‘But this legislation will only benefit UK companies,’ Alex told him angrily.

  ‘Perhaps Hessler’s intend to establish a separate UK offshoot.’

  ‘Why haven’t you been in touch with me about this before now?’

  ‘I only found out about it last night,’ Saul told him.

  ‘Well, I want Carey’s, Saul, and I can’t risk stirring up other people’s curiosity or to waste time looking for another suitable company, not at this stage. I want Carey’s, and I want you to get it for me.’

  ‘Well, it should be easy enough, provided you’re prepared to meet Davina James’s price.’

  ‘Which is?’ Alex demanded.

  ‘I don’t know yet. Obviously she intends to play us off against Hessler’s.’

  ‘No,’ Alex told him, as Saul had known he would. ‘Carey’s has no market value … that’s the whole beauty of acquiring it, and if some damned woman thinks she’s going to get the better of me … There must be another way. Something we can use. Find it, Saul,’ he told him, ‘and find it fast. No more time-wasting games.’

  ‘And if I can’t find a way?’ Saul asked him quietly.

  There was another silence, longer this time than any of the others.

  ‘I’m surprised you need to ask,’ Alex told him acidly. ‘And it won’t just be your job you’ll lose, Saul. The City doesn’t like failures … losers. They make it very, very nervous.’

  ‘Problems?’ Christie asked him lightly when she came back into the kitchen and found him standing staring out into the garden.

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Saul, what exactly does Alex want with Carey’s?’ she asked him quietly. ‘I thought at first that someone else taking over the company would be a good thing for everyone who works there, but …’

  ‘Well, let’s put it this way,’ Saul told her, his mouth twisting, ‘Alex’s attitude towards Carey Chemicals’ workers won’t vary very much from Davina James’s. As far as both of them are concerned, people are an expendable commodity, especially when personal financial gain is involved.’

  ‘But I thought Davina was concerned about Carey Chemicals’ employees.’

  ‘There’s only one thing Davina James cares about, and it isn’t Carey’s or the people who work there.’

  Christie heard the bitterness in his voice, and she heard something else as well. Did Saul realise just what he was betraying to her? she wondered as she caught that angry undertone of disillusionment and pain.

  ‘Alex wasn’t too pleased to be told that Hessler’s are also interested in Carey’s. The last thing he wants to get involved in is some kind of Dutch auction for the business, especially one presided over by a woman.’

  ‘So what do you intend to do?’ Christie asked him, ignoring his reference to Alex’s chauvinism.

  ‘I haven’t been given much choice. Alex wants me to find out some way to put some pressure on Davina James so that she sells out to him quickly and cheaply.’ He saw his sister’s expression and his own face hardened. ‘Don’t waste your sympathy on her, Chris.’

  ‘But she seemed so genuinely anxious to protect her employees.’

  ‘Didn’t she just!’ He paused and then said slowly, ‘Tell me again, Chris … about the safety infringements and those cases of dermatitis.’

  Christie looked horrified. ‘Saul, you can’t use that. It’s privileged information I would never have told you if I’d thought—’

  She paused as the sound of the telephone ringing interrupted her.

  * * *

  Leo frowned as he replaced the telephone receiver after Davina’s call. It was obvious that Saul Jardine’s visit had upset her. He had observed yesterday how careful she was to exert control over betraying her private emotions, and, even though she had been shocked and distressed by his disclosures, she had not reacted to them with the passionate intensity Saul Jardine had obviously aroused in her.

  Leo could think of no obvious reason why Alex Davidson should want to acquire Carey’s, nor why Christie’s brother should assume that Hessler Chemie was a rival.

  Leo had liked Davina. He had recognised almost immediately the virtues in her and the strength. In other circumstances, if he had not first met Christie Jardine … He smiled a little grimly to himself. It would have been easy to form a close relationship with Davina; she was that kind of woman; there was something spiritually refreshing about her, something that a man could draw strength and hope from, and their shared knowledge of their father’s blood-guilt would have formed a strong bond between them … still would form that bond.

  He had heard in her voice as they talked her concern for the future of Carey’s, her sense of responsibility towards its employees, and that too was awareness, a responsibility he knew, if on a much larger scale. Both of them in their different ways bor
e the burden of rectifying their fathers’ omissions.

  Sins of the fathers? He steepled his fingers together and frowned. Experience and caution warned him not to get involved. There was already risk enough in the fact that someone else had made a connection between them, even if it was the wrong one. Much better, safer simply to let matters lie as they were … to let Saul Jardine believe that Hessler Chemie was interested in acquiring Carey’s than to risk anyone making any other kind of connection.

  ‘I told him that our fathers were friends,’ Davina had said. ‘But he didn’t believe me.’ And he had heard in her voice more than anger or resentment.

  Davina was not his concern; not his responsibility. He had problems enough with the family he already had, and this sense he had that he and Davina were now linked at one of the deepest human levels there could be was one he should not encourage or dwell upon.

  There was a telephone directory in his room. He looked at it for a moment and then picked it up, his long lean fingers flicking through its pages until he found what he was looking for.

  Jardine. Dr Christie. He wrote down the number and then picked up the receiver.

  ‘Christie.’ She had recognised his voice long before he said quietly, ‘This is Leo von Hessler; please do not hang up.’

  Her heart was pounding heavily, her body reacting as though it had been under some kind of intense physical strain so that she heard, saw and felt everything at a thick, blanketing distance, as though they were events taking place in a dream in which she was only an onlooker.

  ‘Christie, I should like to speak with your brother if he is there, but first … There is something I should like to say to you before my flight leaves for Hamburg. And I should like to say it in person.’

  He had never intended this; his own vulnerability had told him that it would be safer, simpler, wiser simply to go, and then last night he had seen her face, had felt her anger and pain. If nothing else, at least he could take those from her. He had recognised from her eyes that she had misunderstood his motives in leaving her at her bedroom door, that she had seen them as a rejection.