For Better for Worse

by Penny Jordan

  Venice waited, calmly sure of the effect this pronouncement would have on him. She knew Nick very well by now. Very well, and she knew just how badly his business had been hit by the recession.

  It had amused her to listen to his carefully rehearsed speeches about the need for her to protect herself and the fortune she had inherited. He was quite right, of course. It did need protecting… especially from men like him. But she was more than a match for the Nicks of this world.

  ‘Don’t you see, darling?’ she coaxed now. ‘We need you… the baby and I… and it isn’t just that…’

  She turned away from him, each movement underlining her supplication, her need; each movement carefully choreographed and rehearsed.

  ‘Nick, I’ve got such plans for us…’

  Plans? What was she talking about? Nick was still trying to wrestle with the information she had just given him. His child, inheriting Bill’s millions… His child perhaps coming under the influence, the control of others. His child. Bill’s millions…

  He was sweating again, but for a different reason this time.

  Bill’s millions… Why had he not thought… ? But there was still Fern… Fern whom he would have to divorce if he was to marry Venice and safeguard his role in their child’s life. Fern, who would be free, and Adam…

  ‘Darling, I’ve had the most wonderful idea…’ Venice was saying.

  He frowned, not bothering to conceal his irritation. She was probably going to start telling him how she planned to decorate the nursery…

  ‘You know that Jennifer Bowers has decided to retire from politics? Apparently her father isn’t well, and she feels that she needs to be at home with her family. If you ask me it’s probably far more likely that she’s worried that Maurice might stray, but… Anyway, that means that the party will be looking for a new candidate to take her place as local MP. Think of it, darling. Think of the influence you’ll have, the power…’

  Nick was thinking of it… His head was dizzy with the magnitude of what she was suggesting. MP… MP… How small and unimportant that would make Adam and his place on the local council look… Adam who would have to acknowledge his political superiority, his wealth… his status… MP… It would be him that everyone looked up to… him and not Adam. He would be the one cited as a role model. He would be the one people spoke of in tones of awe and admiration.

  ‘And it needn’t end there,’ Venice was telling him. ‘You’re young, Nick, and there’s no limit to what we could achieve. A ministry… the cabinet… A title…’

  She had him now, Venice recognised; she could see the bemusement, the bedazzlement, the bewitchment reflected in his eyes. She smiled triumphantly to herself. She had always known she could do it, of course, just as she had known within a very short time of their becoming lovers how ideally he could be moulded to become her ticket to the life she craved.

  She could have done it herself, of course; she had the intelligence, the cunning… but the intensely sensuous and sexual side of her nature, the need to control and dominate, the love of secrecy that drove her—these would have been difficult to accommodate in any public role, especially that of a politician. The Press would have seen to that.

  No, it was far better that Nick be the one on whom the public attention focused. She looked at him again. He was like a child, dazzled by the bright colours of a pile of cheap toys, not recognising how easily they could break and be worthless. He could not see, as she could, how tight-fitting and restrictive his role would be.

  She need never fear that Nick would stray. He might be tempted… he would be tempted; but temptation was all he would experience, she would see to that… There would be no pretty, greedy, ambitious researchers for Nick… No doe-eyed, adoring secretaries… no late-night session with co-workers while she waited demurely at home for him.

  The power of wealth was a wonderful thing. They would have a London base, and she would live there when the House was in session.

  The child would of course be at boarding-school, it and any others they might have, and she intended to make sure that anyone and everyone who came into contact with Nick understood who actually controlled not just the purse-strings but his strings as well. Poor Nick. He thought he was the one in control, the one with power…

  Dazed, Nick shook his head, excitement taking over from shock.

  Venice was right. They could do it… He could do it…

  ‘I know you don’t want to hurt Fern,’ Venice told him. ‘But we have to get everything sorted out quickly, Nick, so that when your name goes forward as a candidate no one can start any kind of smear campaign against you. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Adam decided to try for the candidacy. Not that he could afford it, of course…’

  Nick stared at her. He wasn’t going to let Adam take this prize from him. He wasn’t going to let Adam take from him the glory, the power, the prestige Venice had just shown him.

  ‘Mmm.’ Venice was snuggling up to him now, rubbing her breast against his side, sliding her hand down his body.

  ‘Mmm. Just thinking about you becoming an important, powerful politician is making me feel so sexy. Let’s go to bed…’ She touched his body lightly but deliberately.

  ‘That’s something else you’ve got that Adam doesn’t,’ she told him softly as she kissed his mouth. ‘Poor man, it must be dreadful to have so little sex appeal. Now you…’ She kissed him again, flicking her tongue over his lips, rubbing her body against his, slowly starting to unfasten the buttons on his shirt and then drawing her tongue over his exposed flesh.

  He smelled and tasted of sweat, reminding her of her first lover. It wasn’t a pleasant association. Contrary to the impression she gave, Venice did not like her men to be openly sexual in that sense. She preferred them almost antiseptically clean and disempowered of their maleness. But she was not going to give Nick the opportunity to back out now. She was almost there… almost…

  ‘Take me to bed,’ she whispered against his skin, all pleading little girl, all vulnerable supplicant. She knew what Nick liked—what made him feel good and in control. Unlike him. For all his arrogant confidence in his sexuality, he really knew very little about pleasing a woman. Unlike his stepbrother. Now there was a man who…

  Under her breath she sighed. What a pity it was that Adam was so impervious to her. But then, maybe perhaps not. It was better this way…

  This way she would remain in control… in power.

  As she manufactured one of the small, delicate shivers she knew Nick took as a sign of his superiority and her weakness, she smiled triumphantly to herself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘I’VE got to go.’

  ‘No…’ Venice pouted, reaching out to wind her arms around Nick’s naked body. That was one thing he did have, a good body… lithe and firm without too many obvious muscles, his skin sleek and tanned from the sunbed he used at the country club. He really was incredibly vain… but she liked that in a man. It made him more vulnerable.

  ‘No, stay here with me tonight,’ she whispered. She felt his resistance even before his body tensed. But she was prepared for it.

  ‘We still have so much to talk about… I want to sell this house, Nick, buy something else. We’ll need to stay within the constituency, of course… somewhere impressive and large enough to entertain. There’ll be people in London we’ll want to invite down…’

  ‘But what about Fern?’ Nick protested, but he was already weakening, seduced and excited by the picture Venice was so cleverly drawing.

  ‘Leave Fern to me,’ Venice told him softly. ‘She’s a sensible woman. She won’t be able to deny that your marriage has been in trouble long before you met me. You told me yourself how unhappy you were.’ She paused suggestively. ‘How unfulfilled…’ She touched his face, trailing her fingertips along his jaw, kissing the base of his throat, mentally estimating whether she was going to need to arouse him again before he gave in. If she did she would do it orally. He loved that… lov
ed watching her as she took him in her mouth. Why was it that men were so idiotically proud of that ridiculous few inches of flesh? Had they really no idea how vulnerable it was? It amused her the way he attempted to dominate her, to thrust himself into her mouth.

  The first time he had gone too far she had stopped him with a sharp nip of her teeth. She had claimed it was an accident, of course, filling her eyes with tears and the air with abject sounds of remorse.

  The trouble was that she had a very sensitive throat… very narrow. She was sorry if she had hurt him. She had never intended…

  He had believed her, of course, and she had made sure that he now knew that when she performed fellatio on him she was doing him a very special favour which had to be paid for and with interest.

  As always, though, he tended to forget this fact when he was caught in the grip of his own excitement and now, as she watched his face, assessing and judging, she leaned forward, pushing the sheet from her body, whispering breathily, ‘Nicky, Nicky… I’m so hungry for you. Where’s my big bad playmate? I want to give him a nice big kiss and…’

  How predictable some men could be, she reflected—and how boring… How infantile. Nick wasn’t the first of her lovers to respond eagerly to the kind of language which would have been disdained by any intelligent three-year-old. There were others, of course, who preferred a different kind of verbal foreplay, liberally sprinkled with plenty of four-letter words, but Nick wasn’t one of them.

  ‘Don’t worry about Fern,’ she repeated soothingly. ‘Once she knows about the baby she’ll have no option but to give you a divorce. We can sweeten things for her, of course. She’ll get the house and…’

  ‘The house? No…’

  Venice drew back and looked at him, lifting one eyebrow in surprised amusement.

  ‘Darling, you can’t possibly want to keep the wretched place. And besides, think how odd it would look if you didn’t let her have it. Remember, from now on you’re going to have to think of your public image.’

  She smiled coaxingly at him, wrinkling her nose, adding, ‘We can’t afford to have people suggesting that you’re treating her badly, Nick. It’s unfortunate that she’s managed to create such a public role of little helper for herself. Of course, the fact that I’m having your baby is bound to sway a lot of public opinion our way, and we can always help it along by arranging for discreet hints to be dropped that she wasn’t perhaps the perfect wife that everyone believed.’

  Nick tensed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Despite the fact that he himself had threatened Fern with it often enough, the last thing he wanted was for her fling with Adam to become public knowledge.

  Venice shrugged. ‘Oh, nothing too over the top. Just the fact that perhaps, although she was a wonderful housekeeper, she was not so wonderful in other departments. That should get the men on your side, and some of the women, and let’s face it, it would be the truth, wouldn’t it? You told me yourself that she was useless in bed. But, as I just said, I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble getting public opinion on your side, especially if we… you’ve been seen to behave generously financially towards her. After all, divorce is no really big deal these days, not if it’s done discreetly and quietly.’

  ‘That house is mine! I—’

  ‘Nick, darling, think! You’re going to be a politician… you’ll have power and prestige. What does the house matter? I… we could buy half a dozen like it and scarcely notice the cost.’

  She had his attention now. Greed was always a great motivator, as she had good cause to know.

  ‘Stop worrying about Fern,’ she told him, smiling secretively to herself as she lied. ‘I know you don’t want to hurt her, but we have to put our baby, ourselves first, don’t we? Just leave everything to me.’

  He gave in, as she had known he would. After all, she had made a very thorough assessment of his personality before laying her plans.

  As he slept beside her she looked at him. He really was perfect: vain and egotistical enough to be easily blinded by his own importance, charismatic enough, physically and outwardly at least, to appeal to voters. Greedy enough for all the material benefits she could give him to be compelled to stay within their marriage. She had no intention of marrying a man and turning him into a powerful political force only to be forced to abdicate from her chosen throne by some manipulative little vixen who wanted to take her place.

  No, this marriage would be for life. Getting Nick to agree to it had been the easy part.

  Getting the local electorate to accept him would be equally easy, and once that was done… Nick was young enough…

  Nick would be a gift to the media, the political equivalent of the Royal Family’s clever adoption of the Princess of Wales.

  He was young, good-looking and, most important of all as far as she was concerned, so self-centred and wrapped up in himself that it would never dawn on him that she was controlling and manipulating him. Through Nick she would have what she had always wanted: power!

  He wasn’t particularly good in bed, of course, but then she had always felt that sex found its best and most exciting expression outside the marriage bond.

  She had it all planned. Once the news of the break-up of his marriage became public they would, outwardly at least, adopt a repentant, guilty awareness of being the ones to blame. They would vocally and repeatedly announce how sorry they were for hurting Fern… how swept away they had been by their love, how compelled to do the best thing for everyone, but most especially for their child. Nick would later then be able to adopt that excellent and well-proven route to the voters’ hearts of claiming to represent good old-fashioned family values, of putting the needs of the young and vulnerable before all else. At the same time she would make sure that there were people who knew that Fern had not been wholly blameless… that, even though it was not actively her fault, she was so sexually unresponsive, it had had a detrimental effect on their marriage, eventually and of course regrettably allowing, indeed encouraging Nick to look elsewhere for the sexual and emotional intimacy his marriage was denying him.

  She would play her part, of course. Like a chameleon, she had the ability to adapt, to merge with her surroundings and circumstances.

  As the new MP’s wife she would be irreproachable and unimpeachable, a woman set apart from others. She would be envied, of course, and even resented by other members of her sex, but, since they would never even to themselves feel comfortable admitting the real cause of their resentment of her, they would work even harder at pretending that they did not.

  Yes. She had dealt successfully with Nick. All she had to do now was deal equally successfully with Fern. Only, unlike Nick, she had not made the mistake of dismissing Fern as a totally unworthy opponent.

  It was common knowledge how much Fern loved her husband. But then she would have to, to put up with the way he treated her, Venice reflected cynically. Poor Fern… one way or the other she was going to have to give him up, but Venice suspected it wouldn’t be all that difficult. Once she knew about the baby…

  * * *

  Nick hadn’t returned home. Fern had slept in the spare room, lying tensely in bed, ready for the argument she knew would begin the moment he came in, eventually falling asleep in the early hours of the morning.

  She had no doubt that in his eyes by staying all night with Venice he was somehow punishing her, but in reality she simply felt relieved.

  He would have to be faced sooner or later, of course, for she was not going to change her mind; not going to allow herself to be browbeaten into backing down.

  It might not be as easy as she had first hoped to find somewhere to live, but somehow she would do so, she told herself firmly as she put on her coat.

  She was going to visit the local library to borrow some careers books. She would have to get some kind of qualifications, of course, and find a job to support herself in the meantime.

  It had been Cressy who had told her that since she already had a natural gift for l
istening to people without judging them she should consider training for some kind of counselling work—an echo of what Adam had once said to her…

  Adam…

  She shivered, switching her thoughts back to the present and to reality. She had protested at first that her friend was overestimating her abilities, but Cressy had been insistent and Fern acknowledged that her suggestions had appealed to her.

  She had already brought home some leaflets from Relate and read through them, confirming what she had already suspected, which was that the training and standards involved in such work were extremely high, and that only a very small percentage of those who initially embarked on the training programme actually made it to the end and became fully accredited counsellors.

  She could see why, of course, but the information she had read had been extremely daunting. Daunting and yet at the same time challenging.

  She smiled wryly to herself as she walked into town.

  For once there was no need to avoid Adam’s office. Adam was in Italy with Lily James and her family, she reminded herself wryly as habit made her pause to check the square before hesitantly starting to cross it.

  How ironic it was that this should cause her so much more pain than the ending of her marriage to Nick.

  She lifted her head and looked boldly and directly towards Adam’s office and then stiffened in shock as she saw Adam opening the door and walking out.

  Adam was in Italy, Nick had told her tauntingly, but Adam wasn’t in Italy, Adam was here, right here, only a handful of yards away from her, his back turned towards her as he closed his office door, mercifully oblivious of her presence.

  Just for a few precious seconds Fern allowed herself to drink in the physical pleasure of seeing him, the familiar dangerous bumpy thud of her heartbeat, the acceleration of her pulse, the sweet, slow, destructive pleasure of loving him; a drug as fatal to her as the most lethal of poisons.

  And then the exhilaration, the sharp quivering pleasure of seeing him was gone and in its place came the familiar pain of slow despair, spreading heavily through her, hurting her far more than any of Nick’s viciously cruel words. Nick had told her that Adam didn’t want her and she had known it was true, but somehow this… seeing him, loving him hurt even more.