by Fox, Natalie
She stood in the hallway for a minute, breathing deeply, and then everything did get to her. For four years, every time she’d entered this house she’d seen that heart-rending image of Mel standing by the buffet bar in the drawing room, ashen-faced with shock after her father’s announcement. Misty-eyed, Jade let her eyes wander to the stairs. Now, without even going upstairs she knew the spectre of him would be there, standing by the fireplace in her bedroom, naked, wanting her but acting the honourable gentleman and not taking her.
‘Hypocrite!’ she ground out between her teeth as she headed determinedly for the kitchen. And clever too. Softly, softly he had seduced her, for punishment and to blind her with love so that she was so befuddled she wouldn’t realise he was taking the company away from her. And it had all started out with him kissing her because he supposedly wanted to lay a ghost, to exorcise her from his past. He’d done that right enough and now she was the one with the ghosts and spectres in her head.
She switched on the central heating and busied herself with righting a fire in the drawing room, trying not to think as she worked. Most of the time she felt dead inside, numb, as if she had no feelings left, and then suddenly the pain would well up inside her and nearly overwhelm her with the misery it caused.
She made coffee, a huge pot of it, and took it through to the drawing room, where she coiled up on the sofa in front of the fire. And then the tears came, hot and painful and very much unbidden.
‘Oh, no,’ she sobbed into a tissue as she heard a car on the drive. Nicholas and Trisha must have decided to follow her down. She didn’t want them yet—not yet.
There was no escape. Every damned light downstairs blazed. Jade got to her feet, scrubbed at her face and sniffed away the last tear.
A gasp of shock broke in the back of her throat and her legs nearly folded beneath her as she opened the front door to Mel. Was he real or just another hallucination in this house of spectres?
Her first instinct was to slam the door in his face but his foot was already in it, as always a step ahead of her! She stared in disbelief at the red roses he held in his arms, a little worse for wear now. Then her eyes shifted to his face and she gasped at the sight of his drawn features.
‘Thank God you’re safe,’ he breathed raggedly, tossing the roses down on the hall table. He stepped towards her as if to gather her in his arms but Jade quickly stepped back out of his reach. The rat! He had the audacity to think she might have harmed herself because of him! Had he expected to find her with her head in the oven or something?
He stood in front of her, not making another attempt to grasp her. He looked so pale and gaunt, and for a second or two Jade wondered if he had a conscience after all and had come to try and make amends.
Before she could unleash her fury on him he spoke.
‘When I called you Nicholas told me you were driving down. Said you’d just left and you were in a state. I nearly went crazy when I saw the pile-up on the motorway. A car like yours, crushed under—’
Jade let out a cry of disbelief. ‘Huh, you thought it was me, did you?’ she cried almost hysterically. ‘Perhaps your fat ego led you to believe I’d done it deliberately. Tried to end it all after your wicked rejection. My God, you—’
He gripped her shoulders suddenly, so swiftly that she hadn’t a chance to take evasive action. He almost shook her.
‘Stop it, Jade. Don’t talk that way. You are in a state-distraught, not thinking,’ he ground out.
Furiously Jade wrenched herself out of his grip. ‘I am distraught,’ she admitted wildly. ‘But I am thinking, Mel—oh, yes, I am. Let’s start with those, shall we?’ A toss of her head indicated the roses lying on the table. ‘Worth second-hand roses, am I? Is Nadia allergic to them or something?’
‘They were never intended for Nadia in the first place,’ he told her through tight lips. “They were for you. They are for you.’
‘My consolation prize?’ she bit out, the fury in her eyes defying him to come any closer. ‘She gets the company and…and everything and I get the booby prize? Oh, to hell with you. I don’t want you here, in my father’s home. Get out! You can’t have anything to say to me that will be any excuse.’
He faced her fury with equal determination, eyes black now. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly expect you to greet me with open arms but I did expect you to exhibit a modicum of intelligence and give me room to explain.’
‘I don’t want your excuses.’
‘You won’t get any. I said explain, not excuse. Trouble with your hearing as well as your sanity, Jade?’ he mocked, and then he gave her a look that could only be interpreted as pitiful and turned his back on her to walk through to the drawing room.
Jade followed him and stopped in the doorway, transfixed by the real-life image of him standing where he had stood years ago, by the drinks table, now helping himself to her father’s brandy.
The furious protest on Jade’s lips was stilled by the excruciating thought that Mel might have gone all the way—not only bought Ritchie’s but this house and its contents and her father’s brandy as well!
Mel came to her and handed her a brandy. ‘Nothing is what it seems,’ he murmured.
She took the glass and glared at him with contempt. ‘The beginning of the excuses? I can’t wait for you to get to the meaty parts. I mean, what excuse can there be for all the lies and deception you’ve fooled me with?’
‘I’ve never lied to you and I’ve never deceived you,’ he told her quietly. ‘Whatever I have done has always been with your best interests at heart.’
She shook her head and actually laughed at that. He was something else. He ought to be in politics! She supposed she ought to hear him out, and then she would throw him out because nothing he would say would make her change her mind about him.
Jade slumped down on the sofa and cradled the brandy glass in her hands. They weren’t even shaking. Perhaps she wasn’t even here. Perhaps she had died and come back as a hologram!
‘Have you heard from your father?’ he asked.
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘I resent that, you know,’ she told him tightly. ‘I resent you even mentioning my father, drinking his brandy, in his house…no, don’t tell me, it’s your house now. You made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, you…you Godfather!’
‘Grow up, Jade, will you?’ he said harshly. ‘All I’ve bought is your father’s company, not his life.’ He sat in her father’s wing chair by the fireside and stared into his brandy glass.
‘And what about my life? You’ve sold me down the river,’ Jade uttered miserably. ‘Hadn’t you done enough, Mel—deceiving me with Nadia? But it wasn’t enough revenge for you, was it? You wanted a whole lot more—my life’s work.’ She stood up then and started to pace the hearth. She couldn’t keep still. Anger and distrust still burned inside her. ‘And you couldn’t even tell me about it. I had to hear it from Nicholas. How damned ironic after all these years. You couldn’t have stage-managed that better if you’d trained for it. Or perhaps you did…perhaps in those four years out of my life you took a course at the school of irony and deception and-’
‘Stop it, Jade!’ he ordered, getting to his feet and coming towards her. Jade stopped mid-pace and stared at him. ‘You are going way over the top and Nicholas didn’t tell you anyway; I did.’
‘Because your back was against the wall—’
‘Nicholas’s was actually,’ he joked, and had the audacity to offer her a smile.
‘That’s not funny,’ Jade hissed. ‘And you wouldn’t have told me if Nicholas hadn’t found out.’
He shrugged. ‘How do you know I wouldn’t have told you?’
Oh, it was a really stupid question. How did she know? Of course she knew. But…
‘Well, perhaps you were biding your time.’ A thought suddenly struck her and her dark eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. ‘Or perhaps you wanted to tell Nadia first—a romantic engagement surprise. “Here you are, darling; something for you to while away the hour
s with—a little ad agency I picked up on my travels.”‘
Jade crossed the room and refilled her brandy glass. Suddenly it was snatched out of her hands, she was swung round to face him and she felt sure he would be angry, but though he held her firmly it was without malice. Even the shade of his eyes came as an unexpected surprise; they were a soft grey, like morning mist on the forest floor. Jade felt her silly bones start to melt.
‘I want you sober tonight, Jade,’ he said tenderly, ‘though you’re talking so incoherently at the moment I’m beginning to wonder if you’re a secret tippler.’
Surely this wasn’t a time to joke? A sort of defeat washed through her, sapping the last of her energy. This sudden tenderness wasn’t fair.
‘Why, Mel?’ she whispered, her eyes wide with grief, her white lips trembling the words. ‘Why are you here? Don’t you think you’ve put me through enough?’ More than enough, she thought. She was teetering on the brink of insanity and just one little push…
His dark, brooding eyes softened. ‘That’s nothing to what I’m going to put you through in the future, Jade—all pleasurable, I promise you. I would have told you about the agency but your father wanted to tell you. He said it was his duty, not mine. You would have known next week.’
‘And when would Nadia have known—tonight, tomorrow, over some candlelit dinner along with soft music and a diamond ring glinting in the heart of…of those red roses you claim you bought for me?’
She pushed at him then, the whole scenario she had conjured up in her mind sickening her to the very core of her being. She moved out of his air space and took up a stance by the fire, leaning one hand on the marble mantel and staring into the glowing coals.
‘All for Nadia,’ she muttered miserably. ‘She gets it all.’
He came and stood behind her. She felt his presence, the heat of him so close to her. His hand smoothed over her shoulder in a comforting gesture and though she resented it she did nothing to stop it.
‘She gets very little, darling. Just a new chance at life—and that is very little compared to what she has lost.’
Jade turned her head to him and widened her misty eyes, remembering the loss of their baby. But how could she sympathise? Nadia was getting a second chance and that was more than Mel had offered her.
‘I’m…I’m sorry about the baby,’ she murmured, and lowered her eyes away from his. She didn’t want to see his pain; it would tip her over the edge.
His hand on her shoulder stilled. ‘How did you know about the baby?’
Jade stared fixedly into the fire. She didn’t want to talk about it; it hurt so much. She licked her dry lips.
‘She…Nadia…mentioned it this…this morning.’
He let out a small sigh. ‘I’m glad—glad she’s got around to talking about it. It’s been very painful for her.’
In agony Jade looked up at him again, her fingers clawing into a fist on the mantelpiece.
‘Painful for her,’ she husked. ‘Yes, it must have been.’ Her eyes suddenly brimmed with hot tears. ‘And you’re glad she’s got around to talking about it, are you?’ She couldn’t help the derision in her tone. She stepped back from him, knocking his hand from her shoulder with force. Her eyes blazed with the fierceness of her tears. ‘And how do you think I felt listening to that, Mel, knowing you had such a deep relationship with her you had made a baby together? I never had that chance. You slammed out of my life four years ago, not giving me the chance to make babies with you!’
Mel looked incredulous at her outburst and then suddenly he took her tenderly by the shoulders again. His eyes softened and for a second Jade thought she saw a smirk—or was it a smile?—lurking at the corners of his lips.
‘Jade, darling, you haven’t been torturing yourself-?’
Jade wriggled furiously out of his grasp and stepped back from him, eyes shining with anger. Oh, it was a smirk, and he was going to ridicule her now and she just couldn’t take it.
‘No, you are the master of torture!’ she cried. ‘I suppose you have some very plausible excuse—’
‘I’ve never made a baby with Nadia,’ he told her earnestly. ‘I’ve never even slept with Nadia.’
Jade opened her mouth to make a vicious retort, but something stopped her from uttering it. It…it was such a preposterous denial…it…it could be true.
‘Mel?’ she croaked.
He stepped forward and cupped her face in his strong, warm hands and his eyes were deep with emotion as he spoke. ‘Darling, you’re mistaken. I don’t know what Nadia told you but obviously it wasn’t everything, and I know that she thinks so highly of you she wouldn’t purposely lead you to believe her pregnancy was anything to do with me.’
Jade opened her mouth and a small croak came out. She swallowed hard. ‘I…I don’t understand.’
Mel lowered his mouth to hers and caught her trembling lips in a kiss so warm and loving and caring that she felt that little loop of hope do a skip in her heart. Mel was here, had arrived fraught with distress after thinking she had been involved in that pile-up, and now he was denying he was the father of Nadia’s lost baby and…and he was kissing her so beautifully, so deeply, as if he would never let her out of his life again.
He drew back from her, his eyes eating her up, his hands smoothing down the sides of her face. ‘It’s you I love, Jade,’ he told her with deep feeling. ‘It always has been you and always will be you.’
Oh, she wanted to believe him, so very much, but there was so much evidence against it.
‘Mel,’ she whispered plaintively. ‘You can’t love me and do the things you do. To take my company and—’
‘That first meeting with you, I was so mad, still hurt, still bleeding inside and wanting to hurt you. I thought you were married and then when you said you weren’t the hope began to burn. I knew I wanted you back in my life, completely—no half-measures.’
Jade’s head swam. ‘But the company—’
‘Own your company, own you. I couldn’t bear the thought of getting Ritchie’s back on its feet and then just walking away from it and you. Fate had brought us together again; it was another chance for us both.’
‘But…but you had Nadia. You didn’t want me. Here, in this house, when I was ill, you…you wouldn’t…’
‘Because you were ill and had been delirious and I couldn’t be sure if it was the real you or not. And I did have Nadia but—’
“There can’t be any buts, Mel,’ Jade appealed. ‘You’d said you were engaged; you were committed to Nadia, and then you brought her into the company and now…now you’ve bought it for her and…and I don’t understand,’ she finished feebly.
Mel let his hands drop to his sides. It was then that Jade felt her knees go weak. He looked so solemn it frightened her. She sank down to the sofa and he sat with her, leaning his elbows on his knees as he gazed into the fire.
‘I’ve known Nadia for a few years now,’ Mel told her. ‘We met through mutual friends. She was engaged to be married at the time…’
Jade gulped, clenching her hands in her lap. Nadia engaged to someone else? She had been close in once thinking she might be married. Had Mel broken up that engagement?
‘She was at the peak of her career and had just won a major award for an advertising campaign. She had everything to live for and then discovered she was pregnant. She was over the moon.’ Mel paused.
‘And she lost it,’ Jade finished for him, her voice small and wavery with sympathy for Nadia.
‘Carl, her lover, wanted her to have an abortion.’
Jade gasped and bit her lower lip. Surely Nadia hadn’t agreed? She wasn’t the sort. She was a sweet, caring person.
‘Nadia took it badly. She wanted the child. She couldn’t believe the man she loved didn’t feel the same way. It was then that she started to go to pieces. The relationship broken down and her work suffered. She wouldn’t agree to an abortion and Carl walked out on her. Two weeks later, four months pregnant, she lost the baby. A month
after that she tried to commit suicide.’
‘Oh, no!’ Jade cried, her heart hammering so hard she felt faint. Oh, no, poor Nadia. How desperate she must have felt to go to those lengths. Dizzily Jade spun her thoughts back to when she had lost Mel. Though she had been desperate she didn’t think taking her own life had been a serious thought. To actually attempt it…‘She must have loved him very much,’ Jade breathed sadly.
Mel shook his head. ‘He wasn’t the absolute cause of her breakdown, although now she hates him, of course. It was a combination of things, although losing the baby was at the root of it all. She blamed herself, saw it as some sort of perverse punishment for picking the wrong man. She couldn’t get her career back on course and that hit her badly. She just lost control of her life and death seemed the only option. She took an overdose. She was staying in one of my apartments at the time—’
‘Regent’s Park?’ Jade asked softly.
He nodded and raised his dark eyes to meet hers. ‘I told you I’d taken on the rest of the property.’
‘For…for a family.’
He half smiled. ‘A crazy hope that you would come back into my life one day and we’d live happily ever after.’
Jade lowered her lashes. So the same hope had lain in his heart too.
‘You…you found Nadia?’
He nodded. ‘I rushed her to hospital and I’ve looked after her ever since.’ He let out a ragged sigh. ‘You’d be amazed at the way friends slide out of the scene when a breakdown occurs. She was so unstable, people didn’t want to know.’
“That’s what you meant when you said she was grateful, and it explains why, that first day I met her, when she started to thank me for giving her the opportunity, you whisked me away.’ Oh, she understood now; she hadn’t had an inkling before that anything so tragic had happened to Nadia.
Mel nodded. ‘I didn’t want you or anyone else to know what she had been through in case it affected the way you treated her. She was so afraid of people’s reactions, had such a low self-esteem that she was barely able to function. Joining Ritchie’s was a new start for her—new people to work with, none of them knowing what she had been through. I’m glad she opened up to you. It shows she trusts you and has the confidence in herself now to talk to you about it.’