by Penny Jordan
Davina clung tightly to that life-raft of information now, trying not to let herself be panicked by the shock of discovering that Saul had been sacked, trying not to feel pain and guilt at being instrumental in that dismissal.
‘Yours isn’t the only company wishing to acquire Carey’s,’ she heard herself saying. She could hear the sharpness of his indrawn breath and knew she had caught him off guard.
‘Hessler Chemie? My dear girl, what would they want with a company like Carey’s?’
Davina gritted her teeth against his condescension and said sharply, ‘Much the same as you, I would expect, Sir Alex.’
Silence.
Davina closed her eyes. Oh, God, what had she done? Now he would guess that Saul had told her about the new legislation. Quick … she must think of something … anything to stop him from guessing that. She owed that much to Saul at least.
‘Yes. Like you, I expect they’re in the market to snap up as many small companies as they can. You’re like vultures, really, aren’t you … both of you? Using the misfortunes of others to your own advantage, picking off those businesses which have become vulnerable through the recession, knowing their owners have no other choice.’
‘That, I’m afraid, is business,’ she heard him saying. ‘How much have Hessler’s offered you?’
‘I’m not prepared to divulge that information,’ Davina told him coldly. ‘My mind is made up, Sir Alex. Hessler Chemie’s offer is superior to yours. There’s no point in us discussing this any further.’
She could hear him starting to say something, sense his rage almost across the distance that separated them, and as she said goodbye and replaced the telephone receiver she shivered, wondering what it must be like to be Saul Jardine and to be constantly at the mercy of such a man. Only Saul no longer was, was he?
She shivered again, recalling the gloating satisfaction in Sir Alex’s voice when he told her that he had sacked Saul. It had sounded almost as though a part of him had disliked and resented the man whom he had publicly proclaimed as his right-hand man, his natural and chosen successor.
Saul. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. It would only be good manners to get in touch with him and warn him what had happened, wouldn’t it? But how was she going to do that? His sister! Christie Jardine would have his personal address and telephone number.
* * *
Twice on her way over to Christie’s Davina almost turned back. She had a perfectly logical reason for wanting to get in touch with Saul, she reminded herself, and if she felt a certain awareness of the cloudiness surrounding her real motivation, well, it was merely a cloudiness and that was all.
She wasn’t so ridiculous, surely, to really believe she had actually fallen in love with the man, was she? He was aggressive, dictatorial, a bully—all the things she most disliked in a man.
And he was one of the most charismatic males she had ever met, certainly the most complex and confusing, and beneath that outer aggression … Well, if he had demonstrated personally to her the very dark side of his male nature, then he had also equally demonstrated to her that there was another milder, more caring, loving side to him as well.
No man who did not experience those emotions would have dropped everything … risked everything, as he had done, to be with his daughter when she needed him so desperately.
She had a moment’s unease when Christie was so obviously surprised to see her, but she was pleased at the calm way she managed to explain the purpose of her visit.
Christie’s daughter, Cathy, was watching her, Davina noticed. She liked children, and, more importantly, she respected them, and Christie, who was listening frowningly to her request, noticed absently how quickly Davina established a rapport with Cathy.
Some people … some adults were like that, she acknowledged; they seemed to know exactly how to reach out to children, and that knowledge had nothing to do with whether or not they had offspring of their own.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I can’t give you Saul’s number. You see, he’s in Provence with the children; the house he’s renting doesn’t have a phone. I can give you the number of his London flat, of course, and his address, but … It will be several weeks before he’s back in this country.’
‘It doesn’t really matter,’ Davina assured her quickly. ‘I only wanted to acknowledge his note … to thank him for the advice he gave me.’
She gave Christie a quick, tense smile, and Cathy, who was still watching her, gave her a curious look.
‘Look, while you’re here, why not stay and have a cup of coffee?’ Christie suggested. Instinct warned Christie that it would be stupid to get involved with Davina. She was having enough trouble pushing Leo out of her thoughts without allowing herself the surreptitious link of maintaining contact with him through Davina.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ Davina apologised with genuine regret. She had to telephone Leo to check that he had meant what he said about making her that loan and to confess that she had used the von Hessler name to ward off Sir Alex.
She had started to turn away when she heard Christie asking casually, ‘Do you hear much from Leo von Hessler? I ran into him myself at a conference we were both attending.’
Davina stopped. ‘I haven’t heard from him recently,’ she told her openly. ‘But by coincidence I have to ring him this evening. I’ll mention to him that you were enquiring about him.’
‘No … No … don’t do that.’ Christie cursed herself under her breath as both Davina and Cathy stared at her, obviously surprised by her vehemence. ‘What I mean is that he’s hardly likely to remember me,’ she fibbed. ‘I know how expensive these long-distance calls can be … you won’t want to waste time describing a woman he met casually months ago … and whom he’s probably forgotten ever having met anyway.’ Davina, Christie realised to her consternation, was watching her very thoughtfully and assessingly.
‘I’m sure he won’t have done that,’ she said quietly. ‘After all, you haven’t forgotten him, have you?’
Forgotten him. If only she could have, Christie wished savagely after Davina had gone.
Only last night she had woken in her sleep and had actually been reaching out for him before she came fully awake and realised what she was doing.
How had it happened that she had this subconscious, intense awareness within her body, burned into her flesh and her bones almost, of how it would feel had they been lovers, this aching sense of loss and malaise for an intimacy they had never actually shared? It was as though they had physically been lovers; as though in her sleep, when her subconscious mind was anaesthetised, her senses ached and longed for what they had once known and what was now denied to them.
And she knew whom they blamed for that denial … whom they punished. It wasn’t her fault that she had never even once physically assuaged that ache for him. She had been willing enough for them to be lovers. He was the one who—
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Cathy asked her anxiously now.
Angry with herself for allowing her own emotions to be so visible to Cathy, Christie forced herself to smile. ‘Nothing,’ she fibbed. ‘Nothing’s wrong. I was just thinking about your uncle Saul and wondering how they’re getting on.’
‘Tom wrote on his card that Provence is ace,’ Cathy informed her. ‘He said that the house is mega and that they’ve got real peaches growing on trees in the garden.’
Christie had to laugh. ‘Real peaches—mm. Well, shall we go and see if the birds have left us any real raspberries for our tea?’
Dwelling on what might have been did no good. There was no future for Leo and herself. There couldn’t be. And, if she thought this was pain and self-denial now, then how much more would she be suffering if she had actually allowed any real kind of intimacy to develop between them? She could not sacrifice her values and her beliefs to be with him any more than he could sacrifice Hessler Chemie to be with her.
At least the wounds, the pain she was suffering now were clean and would e
ventually heal; those they would inflict on one another if they came together, only to have to part because they could not reconcile their different lives, would never heal; they would become infected and gangrenous with the bitterness and corruption of all that they would do to one another … in the name of love.
* * *
So Saul was in Provence with his children. Why did she feel so dismayed, so deserted, almost, by that knowledge? Davina asked herself. Why should she feel such a surge of emotion; such an intense mingling of anger and resentment, as though he had no right to go without first telling her? After all, what was she to him … or he to her? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Leo tensed as he heard the phone ring. He had just lived through three of the most exhausting, draining and demanding days of his whole life, and now he needed time to recoup, to replenish himself, to revitalise himself before he moved on.
There had been protests, of course, shock, anger, and, amazingly in the circumstances, it had been Wilhelm who had protested the most vociferously when he made his announcement. Wilhelm, who was now, on the face of it at least, to get what he had always wanted and to step into Leo’s shoes.
His talks with the government had been the most difficult and intense; there were so many loose ends to be tied up, so many safeguards to be made, so much legal paperwork to be got through, but now at least it was done. This afternoon he had put his signature to the documents that would transfer control of Hessler Chemie to a managing board of directors who would be monitored and advised by a specially appointed board, containing representatives from each of the major political parties, from the judiciary, from the church and from the academic world, and this august body would oversee the future moral and financial progress and development of Hessler’s.
On their shoulders would now fall the heavy weight of monitoring the corporation and of advising on the decisions that would govern its future.
Wilhelm would be the corporation’s figurehead, the chairman, but a figurehead was all that he would be—Leo had seen to that: he would have no real power, no real control.
And at the back of Leo’s mind lay the knowledge that, should he ever need to do so, should Wilhelm try to break through the restraints he had placed around him, he could always use the final, the ultimate deterrent and reveal to Wilhelm the truth about his birth.
Not that that could ever be anything other than a last resort. Wilhelm was not a compassionate man; there was no softer, gentler side to his nature, but Leo still feared what it could do to him to learn that Heinrich had not been his father, and it was because of this that he had not used that knowledge against him, acknowledging as he did so that, had their positions been reversed, Wilhelm would not have had the slightest qualm about using it against him, would have relished doing so, in fact.
But then, he was not Wilhelm. Thank God.
Like the fabled Gnomes of Zurich, the newly appointed advisory board would work behind the scenes to control the corporation, to control Wilhelm; and they would also make sure that neither of them transgressed life’s moral laws; that they did not use their power in ways that worked against rather than for humankind.
The chancellor had refused to believe him at first, had thought that what he was suggesting was merely a joke, but eventually Leo had managed to convince him. Being the majority shareholder of such a powerful company did possess some advantages, Leo had discovered, and for the first and last time in his life he had used the power that conferred on him to force through his plans.
There had been objections, of course. What he was proposing was unheard-of … And to announce that he himself would henceforward receive no profits from the corporation, that his shareholding would be held in trust for the benefit of others …
He didn’t need any more money, he had said quietly.
There was to be no official announcement in the Press until the end of the month, by which time all the small investors in the corporation would have been reassured that their money was not at risk, but by then he …
He reached for the receiver. It would probably be Wilhelm … again.
To hear Davina’s voice instead of his brother’s startled him. She sounded uncertain and hesitant, and once he had recovered he was quick to reassure her that she had not rung at a bad time and that he was pleased to hear from her.
‘In fact, your call is extremely fortuitous. I was intending to ring you.’
What he had actually been intending to do was to fly over to Cheshire, and he had on his notepad a reminder to call the airport and book himself a seat on the first convenient flight.
There were things he needed to talk over with Davina. Things that affected them both, and besides …
Besides what? Besides … Christie was in Cheshire. Christie … He fought down the fierce surge of urgency and need that invaded his body at the thought of her and tried to concentrate instead on what Davina was saying.
He picked up on the word ‘loan’ and the tension in her voice, and interrupted her quickly. ‘Davina … I am still prepared to give you a loan, but before we discuss it I have a proposition I’d like to put to you. I’ll outline it briefly to you now, and if you’re interested I could fly over to England so that we can discuss it in more detail.’
Two hours later, when she finally replaced her receiver, Davina could still hardly believe what had happened. She stared at the wall and blinked slowly, trying to steady her racing heartbeat.
What Leo had suggested was so revolutionary and unexpected that at first she had thought she must have misheard him.
He wanted to use Carey’s as the vehicle through which the two of them together would establish a new company, but, unlike Hessler Chemie and unlike Carey’s, the drugs this one produced would not have a chemical base but would be based instead on properly researched natural remedies.
‘Where we can we will develop the means to produce synthetic copies of these natural drugs; especially where the life-forms that give rise to them are in danger of extinction will we do so, but we will always follow where nature leads rather than seeking to “improve” on her work by producing drugs which are more powerful and consequently more dangerous than hers.
‘We will not be an organisation devoted to the making of obscenely huge profits; that will not be our goal. Our goal will be to aid humanity, to provide what relief we can for its pains and ills.
‘It won’t be easy,’ he had warned her when Davina expressed enthusiasm and delight at his suggestions. ‘We shall initially face antagonism from the general public as well as the established drug industry; it is in the nature of human beings to fear change and to treat it with suspicion and derision, but with perseverance it can be done.’
It was only after she had calmed down a little that it actually occurred to Davina to wonder why Leo had chosen to site his new venture here in Cheshire. She frowned a little. That was something she could ask him when she saw him.
Sleepily, she yawned. She wasn’t sure what the bank was going to think of Carey’s transformation. It had startled her how closely Leo’s plans had followed the guidelines Saul had outlined in his note to her. Saul …
What was he doing now? Enjoying the balmy heat of a Provence evening, breathing in the scented dusty air? Was he alone, or …?
She gave a tiny shiver. She hadn’t experienced this kind of intensity, of longing, of needing to know what another person, the other person, was thinking, feeling, doing, ever before, not even with Matt.
* * *
‘You should have seen the fish I caught this afternoon. It was this big,’ Tom boasted noisily to Josey.
‘So where is it now?’ Josey demanded derisively.
‘Dad made me throw it back …’
Saul saw the brief assessing look Josey gave him. He and Tom had spent the afternoon together fishing before joining another British holidaying family for an impromptu barbecue supper.
Josey had declined to join them. She had some studying to do, she said. Evidence of it now lay scattered ov
er the kitchen table together with the remnants of the meal she had made for herself. Saul hadn’t argued with her or tried to persuade her to change her mind.
She was still very wary with him, he recognised, still in many ways testing him, and who could blame her? He had yet to prove himself to her as a father, to earn her respect and her trust. And her love?
He was beginning to recognise that, while Tom possessed a solid, untemperamental, easygoing nature, Josey was very much his child. Very much.
She was also a teenager, a girl on the brink of womanhood, touchily self-conscious and vulnerable one moment, and fiercely self-defensive the next. Like him, she had a deep-rooted need to be able to retreat into herself occasionally, and Saul had been aware of the quick, sharp look of surprise she had given him earlier when he had accepted her decision not to accompany them without trying to persuade her to change her mind.
‘Get much done?’ he asked her now, watching as she flipped her hair back off her face, awed by the way the womanliness within her was developing and terrified at the same time because of it. She was growing up so fast. He had lost so much time already. He went cold with horror at the thought of how easily he could have left it too late. As it was …
‘Mm … a fair bit. I thought I might have a break tomorrow and go into Aix. There’s a train …’
‘The Baileys have invited Tom to spend the day with them tomorrow,’ Saul told her. ‘They’re off to the coast. Why don’t I drive you into Aix, and then perhaps later we could meet up somewhere for lunch?’ He watched her out of the corner of his eye, preparing himself for her rejection, tensing against it as she gave a small, apparently dismissive shrug.
‘If you like.’
Saul released his pent-up breath. The casual pose did not quite mask the brief flush of pleasure that stained her skin, the emergent woman momentarily eclipsed by the child.
It would be a long time before she accepted him fully, before she tucked her arm through his with the same easy, loving confidence he had seen the teenage Susan Bailey display towards her father, rubbing her head against his shoulder, laughing up at him as she coaxed some small favour out of him.