Mistress Of The Groom

by Susan Napier

  Jane opened her mouth.

  ‘Get in the car, dammit!’ he exploded, ‘Or I’ll wrap that silky black hair around your throat and drag you there!’

  ‘Bully!’ she slashed back, not quite certain that he wouldn’t do it. She moved with defiant slowness towards the open back door of the limousine. Her feet in the borrowed too-tight black stilettos were almost as painful as her hand, her crushed toes raw with blisters that chafed with every step.

  ‘Stubborn bitch!’ he said, climbing in opposite her. ‘At least now you’ll live for me to bully you another day.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you like to draw the agony out, don’t you? You probably could have destroyed Sherwoods in weeks instead of stringing it out for nearly two years,’ she accused wildly, anything to take her mind off the pain that was turning into a burning nausea in her stomach.

  ‘I could,’ he said coolly, lounging back on the luxurious white leather. ‘But it wouldn’t have given me half so much satisfaction.’

  His frank admission took her breath away. She collapsed back against the seat, hardly noticing as the limousine pulled smoothly into the sparse flow of traffic.

  She thought of all the times over the past couple of years when she had been certain that she was going to triumph over his bitter adversity, only to be hit by another financial blow that tumbled her down into the dumps again.

  But there had never been a chance that she was going to win, she realised numbly. Those brief periods of euphoric hope had been as much a part of his strategy as the devastating body blows, designed to encourage her to fight, to blind her to the ultimate futility of her struggle. And the competitiveness drilled into her by her father had ensured that she had played right into Ryan Blair’s hands. In a sense, she had created her own torment.

  ‘But Sherwood’s wasn’t just me,’ she said through white lips. ‘There were other people involved, people who lost their jobs because of you—’

  His swollen mouth curved cruelly. ‘No, they lost their jobs because of you.’

  ‘My God, you’re callous,’ she said, shaken by the depth of hatred revealed by the comment. She had known that he despised her but she hadn’t realised how much. If she had, maybe she would have been better equipped to predict the pattern of his revenge.

  He shrugged. ‘I expect to be able to pick up what’s left of Sherwood’s for a song... I’ve no doubt I can make it a viable enterprise again in a very short time and reemploy most of the staff.’

  ‘Those who aren’t already in your employ, you mean,’ she said bitterly. ‘If you hadn’t been getting inside information you wouldn’t have found it so easy to destroy my company.’

  ‘Precisely. But all’s fair in love and war, isn’t it, Miss Sherwood? As it happens, your staff’s loyalty was pathetically easy to suborn... Did you know you weren’t a very popular employer? Too much of a chip off the old block, I understand. “Arrogant and intolerant”, “incapable of delegation”, “rigid and unapproachable” were some of the more flattering opinions of your management style.

  ‘You’re looking rather pale, my dear. Perhaps you need a whiskey to wash down the unpalatable truth.’ He opened a compact drinks cabinet and began to pour amber fluid from a silver flask into a crystal glass.

  ‘I don’t want anything from you.’

  ‘So you said. But there’s no gallery here to play martyr to, no one to care whether you show a glimpse of human weakness.’ He thrust the glass towards her.

  ‘I said no.’ She turned her head haughtily away. She hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast and, even if she could bring herself to take anything from his hands, the alcohol would probably hit her like a freight train. She didn’t want to be any more helpless in front of him than she was already.

  Had she really come across to her staff like an unfeeling robot? No, he was just saying those things to hurt her. They weren’t true. She had wanted Sherwood’s to be the best, and in striving to achieve her goals she had expected a lot from her employees but no more than she demanded of herself. Far from being a carbon-copy of her dogmatic father, she had wanted to stamp her own personality on the company, but real-estate was a dog-eat-dog business and the relentless pressure she had been under had necessitated her putting aside her new ideas in order to concentrate on the fight for sheer survival.

  ‘Suit yourself. Ah, well...here’s to the sweet taste of victory,’ he toasted her, and drank with robust pleasure, not flinching as the raw alcohol flowed over his split lip.

  Everything about him was big and brash. There was an offensive vitality about him that contrasted with her own wilted state.

  Jane remembered how uncomfortable Ava had been with his restless volatility, his constant need to be challenged, the natural aggressiveness which charged his character and made him a dangerous man to cross. Being engaged to him had been acceptable when they saw little of each other, but when he had started winding down his business activities closer to the wedding Ava had found herself unable to cope with the everyday reality of his forceful nature.

  Jane had understood her fear, even though she didn’t share it. She had disliked Ryan Blair for reasons of her own but she had never been afraid of him. Even now she was more furious than fearful, for she knew that her own strength of character would carry her through this crisis, as it had through previous tough times in her life.

  He lowered his glass and stretched out his long legs so that they brushed insolently against hers. ‘So...what are your plans now that Daddy’s little heiress is broke and unemployed?’

  ‘Do you think I’m going to tell you?’ she said, swivelling her hips so that her legs were no longer touching his, resenting the implication that she had been a spoilt brat for whom life had been cushioned by privilege.

  His blue eyes glinted in the passing slash of a streetlight. ‘I’ll find out anyway.’

  She didn’t answer, merely gave him the icy look of contempt with which she habitually bid her fears and insecurities.

  ‘Of course, your options are rather limited, aren’t they?’ he mused silkily. ‘The word is already out that anyone who offers a helping hand to Jane Sherwood could find themselves in the same mire. I think “unemployable” rather than “unemployed” is a better description, don’t you?’

  She had already discovered the extent of his influence in her fruitless journey around the banks. With his connections she didn’t doubt that he could extend the threat to every city in New Zealand...and probably Australia, too.

  She shrugged as if she didn’t care, her expression coolly unrevealing. ‘Whatever makes you happy.’

  He leaned forward so sharply that the whiskey nearly slopped out of his glass. ‘You trashed my wedding without warning, without apology, without even an explanation,’ he said harshly. ‘What would make me happy is some expression of regret.’

  She hesitated a fraction of a second too long and he leaned back again, his blunt features grim. ‘But of course you don’t regret anything, do you? Why should you? As far as you’re concerned you got away with your lies.’

  ‘I don’t regret what I did,’ she said bravely. ‘Maybe how I did it, but not that it was done. Ava was my friend; I knew you weren’t right for her—’

  ‘So you lied. In church. In front of my family. My friends. The woman I intended to spend the rest of my life with. You said that my vows would be a lie before God but you were the one committing an act of desecration!’

  Jane flushed and looked blindly down at her throbbing hand. She couldn’t deny the searing accusation. Her guilty knowledge was a burden she would carry to her grave, and beyond—for she had not dared seek advice or absolution for her sin. She had done this man a grievous wrong in the very house of truth. Her only excuse was that he was strong and Ava was weak. He had survived—thrived, even—in the aftermath of disaster, as she had known that he would...

  ‘You told your lies and then you disappeared before anyone could ask you for proof,’ he said, with the pent-up savagery of years. ‘But you k
new you wouldn’t need proof, didn’t you? You knew that Ava was highly strung, you knew that the shock of your words would be enough to send her into hysterics. You were her best friend, she trusted you, and you used that trust to humiliate her and her parents to the extent that she never wanted to see me again.

  ‘You were sick with jealousy of your best friend’s happiness so you smashed it to smithereens by publicly announcing that you and I were lovers!’

  Jane’s flush deepened as she recalled the brazen words that she had flung down the aisle:

  ‘This man doesn’t love this woman enough to forsake all others. He hasn’t even honoured her with his faithfulness during their engagement I’m sorry, Ava, but I can’t let you do this without knowing what’s been going on behind your back—Ryan and I have been having an affair for months...’

  ‘Why didn’t you instantly deny it?’ she choked, defending the indefensible. ‘You just stood there...you didn’t even try to denounce me—’

  ‘I was as stunned as everyone else. It was such a flagrant lie I didn’t think anyone would believe it for a moment...especially Ava. She knew that I loved her—’

  ‘How can you say that?’ said Jane fiercely. ‘You hardly spent any time together...you certainly hardly knew her when you proposed. It was more of a business arrangement with Paul Brandon than a love-match—’

  ‘Is that how you justified yourself?’ He grated a bitter laugh and watched her flinch. ‘I loved her, dammit! From the first moment we met I knew that she was the one for me...she was so beautiful, so gentle and sweet and womanly. The business deal was just the icing on the cake as far as I was concerned; my feelings for Ava were separate—private and precious.

  ‘And that’s what you just couldn’t stomach, isn’t it? That Ava had someone to love her and you didn’t— because you’re a hard-faced, cold-hearted, selfish bitch who always has to be the centre of attention—’

  ‘No—’ Jane shook her head, a thick swath of wavy hair swirling over her shoulder, creating an inky splash against her white breast.

  She didn’t want to believe that he had been as deeply in love with Ava as he claimed, but, oh, God, wouldn’t that explain the extraordinary viciousness with which he had come to pursue his revenge? It would also explain why he had left for Australia rather than force a confrontation when Ava had run away and shortly thereafter married someone else. If he had been in love, Ava’s lack of faith in his honour would have been profoundly wounding, perhaps rendering him incapable of acting rationally in his own defence.

  Based on what Ava had told her, Jane had thought it was only Ryan’s pocket and his pride that would be injured if she forced the abandonment of the wedding, and those things were easily repaired for a man of his talent and toughness. But if he loved even half as passionately as he hated.

  ‘No...’ She shook away the weakening thought. If he had loved then it was an ideal, an Ava who had never really existed except in his imagination.

  ‘Yes! So now I’ve decided to give you what you wanted back then, sweetheart...’ The endearment was a subtle insult, an insidious threat, as he unfolded himself from his seat and loomed over her, his big fists sinking into the leather on either side of her hips, his breath hell-hot against her face.

  ‘Tell me, Miss Sherwood, how do you like being the centre of my complete and undivided attention...?’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘WHERE are you taking me?’

  At that moment, judging by the expression on his face, she wouldn’t have put it past him to be spiriting her to some isolated spot with a quiet murder in mind.

  He didn’t move, still crowding her, surrounding her with the heat of his physical menace as he purred:

  ‘Where would you like me to take you?’

  Her breath caught in her throat, but he eased away and she found her wits again.

  ‘Home, of course,’ she said grittily.

  Without looking away from her he sprawled back on his seat and picked up the phone at his elbow, giving the chauffeur her address. When her eyes flickered he said softly, ‘Oh, yes, I know where you live... I know what you eat, what you wear, who you see. Nothing escapes me.’

  ‘Except the occasional bride,’ said Jane unwisely, wiping the smug expression from his face.

  The breath hissed between his teeth. ‘Ava didn’t escape... I let her go.’

  It was a very fine distinction, but one Jane was beginning to fear might be true.

  ‘You had no choice,’ she protested.

  After fainting at the altar Ava had successfully followed her subsequent fit of hysteria with a full-blown impression of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Any suggestion of reconciliation was clearly out of the question, and her parents had been forced to bundle her away on a quiet, stress-free holiday in order that they might sweep the whole embarrassing fiasco under the carpet.

  ‘There’s always a choice. I could have proved your lie, sued you for slander, paraded the whole sordid business through the courts and the newspapers, dragged a public apology out of you—’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ She still felt a frisson of horror when she thought of all the things that could have gone wrong with her incredibly foolish plan. But she had been young enough to be fired by her own righteousness, rich enough to think that if the worst came to the worst she could buy her way out of trouble and arrogant enough to think that she was equal to anything he could throw at her...

  His voice, like his cobalt stare, was riddled with contempt.

  ‘For Ava’s sake. I wasn’t going to compound her hurt and humiliation by broadcasting your vitriolic lies to an even greater audience, by exposing our intimate lives in open court. Ava hated being in the public eye—even the prospect of a big wedding was an ordeal for her. Exposing her to more ridicule and gossip wouldn’t have regained me her trust, or her parents’ respect.’

  So he had known that Ava didn’t want an extravagant show on her wedding day but still hadn’t supported her against her mother. Given the choice of offending her parents or riding roughshod over the wishes of the woman he loved, he had chosen the latter. What did that say about his so-called love?

  Jane summoned her most indifferent stare as he continued savagely, ‘You planned it very cunningly—I was damned whatever I did. A lie has no leg, but a scandal has wings, and no matter what penalty you were slapped with in court there would always be people who believed that there was foundation to the story. The only way to protect Ava was to remove myself from the scene. I was going to come back when the dust settled and quietly sort things out between us, but by then it was too late. Knowing how cautious she is, I certainly didn’t expect her to get married on the rebound...’

  ‘How very self-sacrificing of you,’ said Jane, crushing down a pang of sympathy. At some stage everyone involved in the sorry saga had modified their actions in order to protect Ava from cruel reality, when in actual fact the helpless little darling had been a clear-eyed pragmatist, operating on her own agenda!

  ‘A concept you wouldn’t understand...not with your heritage,’ he sliced back with razor-edged sharpness. ‘I wonder if old Mark is looking up from his seat in hell, cursing his only child for letting the worldly goods he sold his greedy soul for slip through her fingers...’

  His insulting familiarity made Jane wary, prey to the ambivalent feelings that mention of her parentage always evoked. Mark Sherwood had been as crude as he was shrewd. Not many people had liked him. ‘You knew my father?’

  He smiled unpleasantly. ‘By reputation only. Gone but not forgotten, you might say...’

  His cryptic answer implied there was a great deal more, but as she tensed Jane bumped her sore hand against her thigh and a vicious jab of pain sent a fresh wash of nausea rolling over her, exacerbated by the motion of the car as it swayed around a corner.

  She tried to localise the pain by consciously relaxing the rest of her body, closing her eyes and tipping her head back against the top of the seat, unaware that her sudden p
hysical pliancy was viewed with cynical suspicion by the man opposite—especially as the slow rotation of her tense shoulders allowed the deep bodice of her gown to dip and tighten enticingly over her ripe breasts.

  His big hands clenched at his sides, his blue eyes brooding over the gypsy-dark tumble of hair and the unmistakable signs of stress in the strong-boned face, the hollows shadowed by the thick fan of her lashes and the new prominence of her haughty cheekbones under the pale skin, translucent with tiredness. The lips, which were normally barely touched with discreet colour, were tonight a block of bright red gloss, now slightly smeared, that revealed a surprising fullness, the lush curve of her mouth a sensuous counterpoint to the straight, almost masculine slash of her thick ebony eyebrows. His eyes drifted back down to her breasts, to the long legs tilted away from his.

  ‘You have his looks.’

  ‘Whose? My father’s? I thought you said you didn’t know him,’ Jane said, without opening her eyes. She knew from his gravelly tone it wasn’t meant to be a compliment, even though her father had been considered extremely handsome in his heyday. A man who was attracted to Ava’s delicate, blonde, china-doll brand of femininity was bound to find Jane less than enchanting.

  ‘I know he was big. Dark. Chunky.’

  She was in too much pain to take offence, as he clearly intended her to do. She was big-framed but she wasn’t fat, and in the last few stressful months she had actually dropped below optimum weight for her height.

  ‘So are you.’

  She opened her eyes and found him contemplating the similarity with distaste, absently manipulating his bruised jaw with his blunt fingers.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked involuntarily, jerking upright as she realised the vulnerability of her position.

  ‘Yes,’ he growled.

  ‘Good.’ There was a small silence as they measured glances, blue on blue. ‘You’ve still got blood on your mouth,’ she felt driven to add. ‘In the corner, on the right’