Man Trouble!

by Fox, Natalie

  ‘Sort what out?’ Jade asked, her life back on automatic pilot.

  ‘His supper.’ Diane laughed. ‘Men are unbelievable at times, aren’t they?’ She gathered up some artwork from Jade’s desk and bounced out again.

  Yes, men were unbelievable—small-minded, narrow-minded, pigheaded. And the contender for all those titles was Mel Biaggio. Diane knew she lived with Nicholas on a friendly basis, accepted it because that was how it was in the real world. Diane herself shared a house with two men and another girl. The trouble was, Mel didn’t live in the real world. He lived on another planet.

  Jade’s tears came then, for Mel’s hurt pride, for all the misunderstandings she couldn’t resolve. She would allow herself a cry now and be done with it, because it would be the last time she shed a tear over him.

  Two minutes and it was all over. She crumpled a tissue in her hand and flung it determinedly into the bin, then stood up and went to the window. She was still standing there half an hour later.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MEL and Jade, seated at their desks across the room from each other, waited till Nadia had closed the door behind her then spoke at once, Jade’s voice raised heatedly and Mel’s showing more control.

  ‘How dare you?’

  ‘It’s the only way!’ Mel held up a warning hand and Jade gritted her teeth. ‘Cool it, Jade, and listen to reason—’

  ‘I’m always open to reason,’ Jade blurted with frustration. ‘But you’re not capable of it. You have to dominate. You have to override every point of view I put forward. I’ve been running this company and—’

  ‘And let it run down,’ Mel interjected quietly and levelly.

  As he was forever telling her, outbursts of temper got them nowhere. But it was a blessed release, Jade had argued, except that lately she hadn’t got that expected rush of release after firing off at him.

  She was crumbling, that was why. She couldn’t cope with Nadia. Nadia wasn’t the ‘other woman’ she should be. She was sweet and talented and Jade knew that they would be great friends if it wasn’t for Mel. Guilt swamped her every time she faced Nadia, a terrible nagging guilt for what had happened that night in her apartment.

  But every time she thought about it she reasoned that she hadn’t been in her right mind and that if Mel and Nadia’s relationship had been stronger she would have never allowed it to happen. Nadia adored Mel, but did she love him? Were they truly committed to each other, committed enough for marriage? Mel had talked his way out of that one but it was all so confusing.

  Mel Biaggio was winning. Undoubtedly with her company, undoubtedly with her emotions. There were times she couldn’t think straight and others when her thinking was dead on line, like today.

  ‘OK,’ she agreed, calmly now because it was the only way—his way. ‘Let’s discuss this rationally and—’

  ‘Without allowing our personal feelings to get in the way,’ he interrupted yet again.

  Her eyes pleaded with his across the wide expanse of office space between them. ‘Mel, this is personal,’ she insisted. ‘It can’t be anything else. You and Nadia are undermining me, and because of your relationship with each other it has got to affect your judgement.’

  ‘I’m doing this for the company, Jade,’ he reasoned. ‘It isn’t personal. I’m doing a job of work and Nadia’s idea is good, and if you can’t see that you shouldn’t be in this business.’

  Jade shot to her feet. Sometimes she couldn’t bear to face him, and one of those times was now. She stood by the window, glaring out at the world, her arms wrapped around herself for comfort because she was the only one available.

  She hated dealing with them together; it made her feel at a disadvantage. Mel and Nadia, side by side, against her. It hurt her immeasurably but there was no choice but to endure it.

  ‘Marshall Osbourne will reject the idea, Mel,’ she told him coolly. ‘I don’t want you to submit the presentation to them. We’ve always done their advertising and they’ve always been satisfied in the past. I see no point in changing a winning formula for something so…so avant-garde.’

  ‘You are against it because it came from Nadia. If Dave had come up with the idea—’

  She swung around then and glowered at him. ‘No, Mel, you’re wrong! I’m trying not to take this personally. I really am trying to detach myself from the fact that you and Nadia are—’

  ‘And yet your pinched little face is pressed against that very window every night, watching us leaving together,’ he scathed so unmercifully that Jade’s heart squeezed with the hurt. ‘What a little hypocrite you are, rushing home to your Nicholas every night and pretending that the sight of me and Nadia together actually gets to you.’

  She shook her head in dismay, fighting her pain. Would it never end? ‘You don’t lose out on any opportunity to hurt me, Mel,’ she whispered hoarsely, her throat clogged with emotion. ‘You might think you’re clever but you only show your true ignorance. Cruelty isn’t clever, Mel. It shows weakness, not strength of character.’

  His eyes were steady as he gazed across at her. ‘Were you speaking those words to me or were you telling yourself something?’ His lips thinned. ‘I’m here to help your company, not to put you down as you think. The quicker you accept that, the quicker I can get this business rolling safely enough to get out of your life.’

  ‘And will you take Nadia with you?’ she questioned flintily, her heart secretly tearing at the thought of him going for good. Despite these arguments, despite the sometimes stifling tension between them, she knew if she really was free of him the sense of loss she would feel would be worse than before. Why was love so irrational? She ought to be praying for the day he went instead of dreading it. ‘If you go, will she go? Or perhaps you’ll leave her here, to carry on the torture after you’ve gone. I wouldn’t put that past you.’

  ‘You see, you can’t help but take this personally,’ he sighed in exasperation.

  Oh, she couldn’t get it right with him. She was straining to hold onto her temper and not having a lot of success. If she didn’t get out of this office she would explode. Crossing the room, she snatched Nadia’s artwork up from Mel’s desk.

  She scowled at him. ‘If you won’t tell her I will.’

  ‘No, Jade!’

  She was off and running before he could catch another breath. Diane helped, though unwittingly, by stopping him in the outer office with an accounts file and a very urgent query that Jade didn’t wait to hear about.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nadia,’ she began a few minutes later, placing the artwork carefully on Nadia’s drawing board. She was aware of the other woman tensing slightly and tried to make her rejection as painless as possible. ‘It’s marvellous work but I’m afraid I’m not able to submit the idea—’

  ‘But Mel said my ideas were brilliant,’ Nadia protested, her very dark lashes fluttering impatiently.

  Jade clenched her fists at her sides. This was how far things had gone since Mel had brought her into the agency. A couple of weeks ago Nadia wouldn’t have said boo to a goose. Now she was calling the shots in Jade’s agency, as if she and Mel owned it! So how to handle this blossoming of Mel’s lover—put her down immediately and tell her in no uncertain terms who was the boss here? And show herself to be jealous! she realised grimly.

  Jade swallowed and forced a smile because her emotions couldn’t suffer another loss of face. ‘And Mel is right—the idea is brilliant and I know you’ve put a lot of work into it, but I know from past experience that Marshal Osbourne won’t go for it. His is an old established company and he and his colleagues won’t go for such drastic changes in their advertising.’

  ‘Jade, advertising and marketing techniques are changing all the time,’ Nadia reasoned determinedly. ‘Why don’t you put it to them and see how they take it?’

  Jade clenched her fists even more tightly. Nadia was gaining confidence, with guidance from Mel, no doubt. Where was it going to end?

  ‘Because it will be a waste of time—’<
br />
  ‘Why not give it a try, Jade?’ Mel said smoothly from behind them.

  Jade and Nadia swung round to face him. Jade’s eyes flicked furiously from one to the other; she felt trapped and put upon and so terribly out of everything.

  ‘To have it slammed back in our faces, Mel? Because that is what will happen. I know these people—’

  ‘Don’t forget I’ve had talks with Marshall—’

  It was the conciliatory tone that did it for Jade, as if all her four years’ work in the agency accounted for nothing and all that mattered now was this damned…damned brilliant idea of Nadia’s. Resentment at having to endure weeks of his put-downs welled up inside her. She couldn’t bear it any more. He was destroying her very soul.

  ‘Damn you, Mel Biaggio!’ she cried in frustration. She grasped at the sketches on Nadia’s drawing board and thrust them into Mel’s chest. ‘Take them, submit them. What does it matter what I say or do? I’ve no…no authority here…I’m…I’m…’

  To her horror and shame she burst into tears. Impossibly the tears streamed down her face and she couldn’t have stopped them if she’d tried. Ashamed at her weakness and through a blur of red mist, she swung away from them both and hurtled towards the door, wanting to be far away from the two of them, far away from everyone and everything.

  She felt her arm being seized but ploughed on nevertheless, driven by despair, not able to shake away the grip on her arm. There was nowhere to run to without prying eyes. Dazed with confusion, everything a blur through her tears, she hesitated at the stairwell, unsteady on her high heels, and then she was steadied by the support of two strong hands on her shoulders. She was gently urged down to the ground floor and through the double doors of the new presentation suite, which was nearly complete and mercifully empty.

  Through an echo chamber of despair she heard the doors slam behind them and then Mel tried to fold her into his arms and she sobbed and gasped and struggled against him, bringing her small, bunched fists up to pound ineffectually against the brick wall of his chest.

  ‘I hate you, Mel Biaggio, I hate you!’ she sobbed in anguish. And she did—hated him for all he had put her through, then and now and for ever. There was no letup in his cold dismissal of her heart and her ideas—and everything!

  He held her firmly yet allowed her enough freedom to work her anger into a state of exhaustion, and eventually she collapsed against him, weak and senseless with spent rage, and he stroked her silky hair with long strokes, trying to comfort and calm her. ‘No, you don’t and that’s the trouble,’ he murmured tenderly.

  She pushed at him then, with the little strength she had left, and lifted her burning, tear-streaked face to glare at him defiantly. ‘I do hate you, Mel,’ she insisted hoarsely. ‘At this precise moment in time I hate you for everything. I hate you for taking on this job, for thrusting Nadia into my life, for loving me and then discarding me. I hate—’

  ‘Yes, you said—everything,’ he interrupted gently.

  He looked down at her and lifted her chin and held it to make sure she didn’t escape. His touch was warm and magnetic, his eyes soft as if he understood, and that old weakness surfaced in Jade, nearly making her sway into him again, needing his touch and his comfort and for some sweet words from his lips that would give her hope. She held herself in check, though—it was imperative that she did; already she had shown too much vulnerability. Pride was her saviour at last and she wished she had summoned it before this embarrassing display of weakness in front of him and Nadia.

  There was a very small smile on his lips as he added, ‘You know, I would have put money on Nadia bursting into tears just now instead of you.’

  She stared up at him with shame widening her eyes. Oh, God, she must have come across as some ogre. She hadn’t wanted to hurt Nadia; she…she liked her and her idea was good but not quite right, and if Jade hadn’t been powered by her own personal trauma she could have got together with her and they perhaps could have come up with something more suitable between them. But she hadn’t thought at the time because her heart and the suffering it was being forced to endure had taken precedence.

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ she murmured, lowering her chin out of his grasp. ‘I’ll apologise to her.’ She sniffed and Mel took a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. Jade wiped her face. ‘I suppose she laundered this for you,’ she couldn’t resist saying, and then instantly regretted it because the thought brought more tears to her eyes. She swallowed hard. ‘How will she feel washing my lipstick from it?’ She held it out to him and he took it and stuffed it back into his pocket.

  ‘Nadia doesn’t do my laundry,’ he told her gently, and the corners of his mouth crinkled as if the thought amused him.

  ‘Everything else, though,’ Jade said wearily. She was getting herself together again and hating what she had done—attacking Nadia like that and then breaking down in front of the pair of them and Mel trying to comfort her as if she was some poor wretch who needed his consolation. But she did need consolation, some sort of help, because she was finding it all so difficult. In another moment of weakness she spoke.

  ‘I can’t bear it any more, Mel,’ she admitted in a quiet voice. ‘I thought I could cope with it all and I can’t.’

  Then, instantly regretting the weak confession, she put space between them. She stepped back and sank wearily down onto a sofa that had just been delivered that morning. It was still covered in its protective shroud of polythene. She sat on her hands, staring down at the polished oak floor, thinking bleak thoughts. He had organised all this—the new presentation room, the video studio next door, all ready to start in the next few days. He could save the company but at a price—the price of her heart and emotions.

  ‘What exactly is it you can’t cope with?’ he asked quietly.

  He should have known but at times like this he never did. He thought it was all about this power he was wielding within the company, trying out new ideas. And that was a part of it but nothing like the truth. She loved him so much and he had led her to believe they had a second chance but it was all a wicked ruse.

  ‘I can’t cope with you and Nadia and everything,’ she went on faintly. ‘You side with her, against me.’

  He came and stood in front of her, lifted her hand and urged her up to her feet.

  ‘How absurd you are. You can’t keep your personal life out of your business—’

  ‘It’s impossible!’ she protested with a sudden surge of strength. ‘The whole situation is impossible.’

  ‘It isn’t. It’ s hard but it isn’t impossible. If you are suffering because of what you think about me and Nadia then you must have a fair idea about what I’ve been through in the past.’

  ‘You are going through nothing, Mel! You haven’t the sensitivity to suffer.’ She knew that wasn’t true, knew that he had suffered, but he had put himself through it, made it worse for himself by not listening to her.

  He was still holding her wrists, and even in the midst of a row and her own distress she was aware of his strength and his magnetism and knew her need for him would never die. But he had no need. His eyes were as darkly unforgiving as always.

  ‘But you’ve always tried to win, haven’t you?’ His voice was suddenly sour with bitterness. ‘Wanting it all-’

  ‘Nicholas?’ She seethed with frustration at his unreasonable accusation. ‘Always Nicholas! And what about Nadia? You throw Nicholas at me and yet you have her, and she is worse because you talk of marriage to her.’ She tried to stop her eyes filling with tears again but it was impossible. But what did it matter? She had nothing left to hide from him.

  His grip on her tightened. ‘I found you betrayed me yet again,’ he grazed, his voice like slivers of needle-sharp ice. “There is no end to it with you, Jade.’

  ‘Because I know I’m wasting my time with explanations,’ Jade whispered plaintively. Her tears spilled then, hot and salty, cascading over the rims of her dark eyes and trickling down the side o
f her nose. ‘I never told you about Nicholas four years ago because he wasn’t important. You and I…we…we were lovers and…and nothing and no one else mattered. I admit I should have mentioned him and I had every intention of introducing you to him at my party, but because of my father I didn’t get the chance.’

  ‘And this time? You had several opportunities to bring Nicholas up,’ he reasoned, and Jade thought she detected a softening of his tone and took advantage of it.

  ‘I know,’ she murmured, and wiped a tear from her cheek as she lowered her head. ‘I don’t really have an explanation for that.’ She shrugged. ‘At first it didn’t matter because you were only back in my life on a business footing, and then…’ She raised her head and bravely looked into his dark, still suspicious eyes. ‘I don’t know, Mel; I don’t know what was going through my head that night we made love. We were working over supper and I was thinking about our past and how it once was between us and then…’ She sighed helplessly. ‘I didn’t think of Nicholas. He’s not often there, just uses the apartment when he’s in town. Everything was so good with us and…and he just wasn’t important.’

  It sounded so feeble, so totally unconvincing, and he wasn’t believing her. She drew in a ragged breath. ‘I know I’ve hurt you, Mel; it was never intentional but…but you know, it isn’t a lot different for me. You’ve never met Nicholas and I see Nadia every day. You eventually admitted you had no firm commitment to her and I accepted it. Yet you go off together every night and I don’t even know if you live together or not.’

  ‘Maybe you don’t care enough to find out,’ he suggested darkly.

  ‘Maybe I care so much that I don’t want to know,’ she grazed back at him, hurt to think…Oh, what was the point? He could never forgive her and was only grudgingly listening now.

  He said nothing and Jade couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going on in his head. And then he took her completely by surprise by lowering his mouth to hers. Her head swam with the intensity of the kiss and confusion ran riot in her very soul. What was this—a test for them both, to see if either of them cared enough to forget their past and get on with the future?