Man Trouble!

by Fox, Natalie

  With another sob of anguish Jade tried to imagine what revengeful measure he would take in the future, because he wouldn’t let this go, that was for sure. She had injured him even more, damaged herself beyond repair. There was no hope now—nothing, nothing. She was devastated and there was only one way to go.

  She took hold of herself, straightened her emotions till they were taut against more pain. She was determined now the initial shock was over. She’d come out of this with her sanity intact if nothing else. Mel wouldn’t listen to reason; it was hopeless, and that was a thought to keep firmly in mind. Last night had been an aberration and aberrations were best put behind you. Life had to go on.

  Miserably Jade stared through the glass doors of the studio, unobtrusively watching the bubbly Nadia at work. David was leaning over her board and they were laughing together. How could people laugh when life was such a terrible pain? It was all so much harder to deal with than her determination had led her to believe. ‘Two more calls this morning,’ Diane told Jade when she returned to the office. ‘I keep telling these people Mel is in Paris and you’ll speak to them, but it’s Mel they want. Can’t blame them,’ she added dreamily. ‘He is gorgeous.’

  ‘Women!’ Jade snapped. ‘Have women been calling him here?’ So he hadn’t changed. There were others as well as her and Nadia. Her hand went to her forehead and she kneaded her brow.

  Diane eyed her curiously. ‘Not all of them were women, but…but they were business calls. Marshall Osbourne in particular—several calls from him.’

  Jade’s hand dropped to her side and a small prickle snatched at her spine. She picked up a pile of faxes from Diane’s desk and swept into her office, muttering under her breath, ‘They were probably at kindergarten together.’

  Diane heard and laughed but Jade wasn’t laughing when she slammed her door. Just what the hell did Mel Biaggio think he was doing? Anyone would think he ran this company now!

  She slumped down at her desk and for a moment held her head in her hands to get herself together. She was almost glad of this new development; it was a diversion to narrow her thinking to the company rather than Mel. If what she was thinking was true it would help her heart to get back to some semblance of normality. She picked up the phone and dialled Marshall’s number. Ritchie’s had done his advertising for years. He was a friend of her father’s. What could he have to say to Mel that she couldn’t deal with?

  Ten minutes later she knew and it was what she had suspected.

  In a fury Jade stormed into Diane’s office. ‘Any calls that come through for Mel you put through to me. If anyone refuses you tell them straight that this is not Mel Biaggio’s company, it’s mine! Mel Biaggio has no connection with this company other than as a consultant! Mel Biaggio is—’

  ‘Back,’ came from the door as it swung open.

  Jade glared at him angrily, refusing to acknowledge how drained and haggard he looked. He’d probably heard her screams of anguish down on the ground floor. Well, if he cared to step into her office, he’d hear them all over again—even louder!

  She didn’t even have to ask. He strode past her, dark and menacing and very travel-weary, straight into the office. Jade followed, slamming the door after her.

  ‘Leave that coffee alone,’ she ordered. ‘That is my coffee. This is my office. This is my company and—’

  ‘Your father’s company,’ he corrected her frostily. ‘Calm down, Jade. And remember you’d be facing your father with a winding-up order now if it wasn’t for me. What’s all this about?’ He poured coffee with his back to her, that broad back that she had clung to so passionately…It didn’t bear thinking about. She couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—allow him to get into her heart again.

  Jade clenched her fists to steady herself. She was furious with him and knew that allowing her senses to go off on an emotional tangent was weak and pointless. He was an arrogant swine, she reminded herself, and clever too, but not clever enough to cheat her out of her heart and her company.

  ‘It’s all about you having everyone believing you run this company now!’ she told him. ‘Marshall Osbourne, one of my oldest clients, my father’s before me, is ringing this office asking for you and not me. And there have been others before him, all wanting to speak to you…I rang Marshall and he said he’d heard rumours that we are…we are…’

  Oh, no, her voice was giving out. Mel was back from Paris, here in her office, facing her now as she hurled out abuse at the way he was taking over. Oh, yes, she was mad about that, but if he stepped towards her and took her in his arms and told her he loved her…Oh, God, he was staring at her so coldly and unemotionally. He did believe she was living with Nicholas and she should never have allowed that to happen. And now where was her grim determination to get over him when she needed it?

  ‘Go on, don’t run out of steam; you can do it,’ he urged, as if he were prompting a foreign language student. His expression didn’t change. Cold and hostile, he waited for her response.

  Jade ran her tongue over her dry lips. Suddenly, irrationally, she didn’t want to talk about the company. She wanted to talk about them, to try to reason with him once again. Over and over again she had tried to convince herself that Mel wasn’t such a monster as to be able to make love to her simply out of revenge and she had nearly succeeded. Almost convinced herself that he couldn’t have done it without feeling.

  Now, however, as she stared at him, she wasn’t sure, and it reinforced her theory that this whole situation was hopeless. She really was fighting a losing battle but again and again a spurt of hope struggled to the surface and made her say and do things she had resolved not to. Like now—she was letting the way he looked at her unfold her hardened emotions to expose her vulnerability.

  ‘Mel, it isn’t what it seems,’ she said plaintively.

  He frowned. ‘What isn’t?’ he asked in a tone that implied he genuinely didn’t know.

  But Jade knew he did. He was getting some sort of morbid pleasure out of putting her through this. And she couldn’t take any more punishment; enough was enough. She had to be harder, stronger, as hard and as noncommittal as he. With an enormous effort she lifted her chin and returned his coolness with her own. This wasn’t the time or the place to thrash out their love life. She had to get company business dealt with before thinking of her personal pain. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Marshall said he’d heard rumours that there was going to be a change of ownership. He said you had led him to believe—’

  ‘I can’t be made accountable for what other people believe, Jade,’ he told her evenly.

  ‘You’ve met him. He said you put a new advertising suggestion to him, something completely different, and he got the impression—’

  ‘Whatever impressions he got have no bearing on me,’ he said darkly. He went to his desk with his coffee and Jade wanted to knock it out of his hands with frustration. He had an answer to everything.

  She crossed the room and stood in front of his desk as he sat down, her eyes narrowed warningly. ‘I want you out of this company and—’

  ‘Out of your life, no doubt,’ he interjected lethally.

  Jade’s heart wrenched. What if she said she didn’t want him out of her life, that she wanted him in it and for it to be like it was before Nicholas and Nadia and the world had intervened? She saw the cold determination in his Italian eyes. She might as well fight World War Three on her own with a bent pitchfork, it was that hopeless, she realised.

  ‘You were out of my life four years ago, Mel,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t listen then and nothing has changed. Our night of love last week was your revenge and—’

  ‘We’re getting personal here now, are we?’ he drawled.

  His tone was so blatantly mocking that she fought back immediately because it was the only way to stop herself crumbling before him. ‘Don’t play idiotic games, Mel, not now. The joke is beginning to wear thin. Your revenge pitch was very funny, I don’t think!’ she grazed sarcastically.

&
nbsp; He shot to his feet, fire brightening his eyes. ‘My revenge!’ he blazed. ‘I’m sick of hearing that word bandied around as if you think I base my life on it. You, always you, the hurt one—’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, that’s why!’ she cried.

  ‘If you lived for ever you’d never know what I’m thinking because you only think of your own supposed hurt. My pain doesn’t exist!’

  ‘I…I want to explain.’

  ‘And I don’t want to hear some feeble protestation that I must be mistaken and you are not living with Nicholas Fields—’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Jade cried. ‘I don’t take you for a fool, Mel.’

  His eyes blackened murderously. ‘But you do—you have! Not once but twice! Nicholas Fields drove us apart four years ago and you didn’t learn, did you? For God’s sake you’re living with the man and probably have been since for ever!’

  ‘It’s not what it seems!’ Jade protested hotly, and even as the words came out she knew they were a hopeless repetition of her earlier protests. He would never listen to reason.

  ‘So for some obscure reason he chooses to store his suits in your apartment, or perhaps you had simply picked them up for him and—’

  ‘No, Mel!’ Jade pleaded. ‘Please-’

  ‘“No, Mel”?’ he echoed in rage, and shot round the desk to her. Jade flinched as he gripped her shoulders fiercely, as if he wanted to shake the life from her. ‘Thank God I had to leave for Paris that morning because if I had stayed you might not be here now, trying to make pathetic excuses for yet another betrayal. I’ve had a week to get myself together over this,’ he grated fiercely. ‘I always did suspect you might be my life sentence, but I’m not going to spend it inside for the likes of you so don’t tremble in my arms as if you fear for your life.’

  ‘I’m trembling with anger, not fear,’ Jade flamed back, trying to shake his powerful hands from her shoulders but failing miserably. ‘You never let me explain; you won’t allow me to put my side of it. Nicholas has a girlfriend and—’

  ‘MĂnage à trois? That wouldn’t surprise me given the circles you move in!’

  ‘You don’t know the circles I move in because you have never wanted to know,’ she fought back. ‘You are so damned old-fashioned I’m amazed at your womanising reputation.’ Her eyes narrowed, lending intensity to what she was saying. ‘I’m not even going to waste my breath trying to explain my living arrangement with Nicholas but I would like to stress one point you might like to give thought to at some time. Sex is so high on your list of priorities with women that—’

  ‘You think this is about sex?’ he stormed, letting her go so abruptly that she swayed. Fists clenched at his sides, he stood before her, unremitting, unrelenting, unmerciful. ‘You even insult my intelligence to the very end. Can’t you see your betrayai goes deeper than merely sexual? It’s enough that you have a life with this man; it’s enough that he is in your life when I was deprived of the chance. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ she breathed raggedly. ‘You have Nadia and-’

  ‘I wasn’t involved with Nadia four years ago when I was in love with you,’ he interrupted. ‘Why did you keep Nicholas from me four years ago? Why is he still in your life to this day if he doesn’t mean anything to you? Do you get some sort of perverted pleasure out of running around with two men?’

  ‘Stop it!’ Jade cried desperately, her fists tightly clenched. How could he torture her this way? It was so cruel and so unfair. Why wouldn’t he listen?

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me the second time around?’ he went on, unrelenting in his pursuit of further revenge. ‘You had the opportunity. In my bloody innocence I even asked you if you shared your apartment!’

  Jade gazed at him in dismay, her eyes wide, deep pools of despair. Yes, he had given her the opportunity and she hadn’t seized it and that had been her big mistake. And then he had been approachable and now he wasn’t because she had let it go too far. She parted her lips, not knowing where to begin to try and explain yet again, but the buzz of her intercom jarred her senses into life. Automatically she reached for it but Mel was quicker, his hand snaking out and grasping her wrist. In defiance she flashed her dark eyes at him and reached for the intercom with her other hand.

  ‘Nicholas on the line for you, Jade. I told him you were busy but he says it’s important.’

  Mel’s grip on Jade’s wrist burned like a sadistic Chinese torture and his eyes were slivers of ice, and Jade knew with a desperately sinking heart that she had made yet another appalling mistake in insisting on answering the intercom. And what appalling timing on Nicholas’s part. He couldn’t have picked a worse moment to ring her.

  She stared back at Mel, her whole body slackened in defeat, her eyes bleak. From somewhere came her voice, flat and dead, as if someone else were forming the words for her and projecting them through her pale lips.’I’ll call him back, Diane,’ she instructed dully.

  ‘I wonder what was so important?’ he breathed sarcastically as he thrust her wrist contemptuously away from him. ‘What’s for supper tonight, maybe?’

  She clutched at her wrist, rubbed where he had gripped it and slowly and composedly she closed her heart to him, locking it all away—her smashed emotions and aching senses and every reason for ever loving him. There was only one way to go, one direction she could take. She stepped back from him, lifted her chin and her eyes were glacial as she spoke meaningfully and forcefully.

  ‘I want you and your baggage off my premises immediately. Take your talent, Nadia, and the two of you get out of this company. Send me a bill for your services, Mel. Whatever the price I’ll pay it, even if I have to sell all my worldly goods, because I will not be indebted to you!’

  He watched her as she spoke, watched her lips moving and her eyes so hard and determined, and when she’d finished he moved back around his desk, separating them as if it was important that he did so. Then he smiled. A smile she could happily have sliced off his face with the cutting edge of her tongue if she could have thought of something further to floor him with.

  ‘You have a lot to learn about me, Jade Ritchie,’ he said quietly and damningly. ‘You don’t tell me when to come and go and you don’t tell me what to do with the women in my life. I’m here to stay for as long as it takes. As for Nadia, she answers to me, not you. I stay. She stays. As for you…’ His index finger came up warningly and his eyes narrowed to slivers of steel. ‘You, Jade Ritchie, walk a dangerous path every time you cross mine. Here, in this office, we talk business and nothing else. We don’t have a personal life any more. You very successfully destroyed that, as you are so adept at doing. Have I made myself clear?’

  Jade’s world seemed to close in on her, crushing her very soul. They hadn’t a chance and probably never had had if she cared to punish herself more by thinking of it in depth. Because of her grave error in not telling him about Nicholas, she had ruined any chance of reconciliation with Mel.

  But she wasn’t entirely to blame. He must take some of it onto his own shoulders—but of course he wouldn’t. He was always right and she was always wrong. Nothing had ever got through his thick mantle of pride. Not her love, then or now, although she had shown it so clearly the night they had made love, shown how deeply she cared for him, how right they were for each other. All hopeless. She’d torn her emotions ragged since he’d come back into her life, and for what? Nothing but pain and more sorrow. And now he was throwing his weight around in her business world as well as her emotional life, commanding her to obey him.

  He was ten times more powerful than she had imagined, she realised, her heart thudding dully. He almost struck fear into her, but fear wasn’t what she needed in her life now and she wouldn’t allow him to frighten her this way. This was still her father’s company, not his, and she was plugging into that source of power and would use it and gain from it. She would use Mel Biaggio in a professional way, as had been the original intention.

  Determinedly she s
quared her shoulders and looked at him unflinchingly. ‘Yes, you’ve made yourself clear, Mel,’ she said strongly and levelly.‘Do what you do best—save the company—because you are pretty useless at everything else. Just allow me this last word on our personal life—and it will be the last, I promise you. Our relationship didn’t stand a chance from the off, Mel, because you are so obstinately old-fashioned. You can’t hold a woman and you never will,’ she went on with feeling. ‘I’ve a feeling Nadia will turn you down in the end. She will if she has any sense, anyway, because you—you are a tyrant!’

  She hadn’t got to him as she had intended, hadn’t managed to hurt him in retaliation for all the hurt he had doused her with. She could tell by the way the corners of his mouth turned up that she hadn’t even grazed his emotions. With one last look of contempt fired at her from across the room, he turned and left the office. And as always left Jade with a feeling that whatever she said or did he would always, but always come out on top.

  She stared at the door, every ounce of will in her body fighting the need to crumble into a heap of despair. How could he fill her with such fury one moment and the next reduce her to some wretched weak and ineffectual idiot? The trouble was, it was hard to hurt a brick wall, unless you were another brick wall—and Jade wasn’t. At this moment she felt as feeble as an out-of-date lettuce leaf. Weakly she slumped down into her chair and took a long, ragged breath, trying to gather her senses.

  ‘Mel stormed out in a fury,’ Diane told her as she stepped into the office. ‘Sorry, did I interrupt delicate negotiations with Nicholas’s call?’

  Jade looked up and managed a very thin, rueful smile. ‘No, nothing important.’ Only her life, the destruction of it, she added silently. No, to hell with Mel Biaggio; he hadn’t completely put her down yet. She was going to come out of this if it killed her.

  Diane looked relieved. ‘Nicholas said not to bother calling back, he’d sort it out for himself.’