by Penny Jordan
Was that what the girl thought he was: an available piece of meat? He shrugged the thought away as being unimportant.
He rapped firmly on the outer door of the suite and had to wait several minutes before he was admitted by a tall, elegantly dressed redhead, whose looks made him revise his earlier assumption. If this woman was Gloria Pilling, he doubted that she would need to pay for her sex.
It was true that beneath the surface gloss of a near perfect bone-structure, and facial features that no man would be able to resist looking at at least twice, she was as hard-edged as polished steel; but Jake had never seen any necessity for women to conceal the fact that they had intelligence and brains as keenly sharp as any man’s. Stupid women like his aunt, who didn’t know how to use their intelligence, irritated him, and the few brief liaisons he had indulged in had always been with women whom he had admired initially for their conversation and wit.
He doubted that this woman would be witty. She wouldn’t be able to spare the time… No, this woman would concentrate solely and exclusively on her chosen goals. Even the smile she gave him, while polite, was sharp and pointed, as though underlining the fact that he was the supplicator.
‘Do come in,’ she invited coolly, glancing at the heavy Cartier watch encircling her slim, tanned wrist.
She had the svelte body of a woman used to indulging and pampering her own flesh, and yet she moved with the lithe fitness of someone who used her body physically. Her hair gleamed silkily with health, and although Jake suspected that the tautness of the delicate skin stretched across her facial bones probably owed a little more to the surgeon’s scalpel than to nature, no one looking at her could doubt that this was a woman in her sexual prime. And yet Jake felt repelled by her, chilled by her.
‘You’re on time… good. I’ve rather a lot to get through today, so shall we get right down to business?’
He permitted himself a brief smile, recognising her swift grasping of control of their meeting, concealing his body’s physical dislike of her.
‘By all means. My solicitor informs me that you wish to purchase Fitton Park.’
His coolness caught her off guard. He saw her hesitate momentarily.
She was a good many years his senior, and he suspected it had been a long time since she had last failed to intimidate anyone. He was not a boy any more, though, and he suppressed his own satisfaction at her small betrayal and asked calmly, ‘May I sit down?’
‘Er—yes, please do… Would you care for some coffee?’
‘Later, perhaps… I, too, have other appointments this morning.’
It was a lie, and he watched her body tense as though it was under attack, wondering what had made her so brittle and aggressive. And she was aggressive; he could sense it beneath the deceptive cloak of sexual availability that she wore so skilfully and easily. The original wolf in sheep’s clothing, he reflected, watching her, waiting for her to take the initiative, knowing that he had already managed to disconcert her, and curious to see how she would react.
She rallied quickly, coolly telling him that Fitton Park was merely one of several properties in which she was interested, and then promptly producing surveyors’ reports on the house which Jake recognised immediately were designed to make the property appear of such little value that an innocent, ignorant of the tactics being employed against him, might almost have given the property away just to rid himself of its potential burden.
‘So, in effect, what you’re saying is that in purchasing Fitton Park you would be indulging in a mere charitable impulse,’ he drawled when she had finished, his voice purposely in direct contrast to her own sharp, incisive speech.
She stared at him, the sapphire brilliance of her eyes hardening.
He wondered absently if she was wearing coloured contact lenses. He had certainly never seen eyes of that spectacular shade of blue anywhere before.
He had discovered as he matured that he was surprisingly invulnerable to physical beauty… that it was the inner and not the outer person who appealed to his emotions. This woman with her perfect figure and face chilled rather than aroused him.
She gave him a thin smile. ‘I’m not given to charitable impulses.’
‘No,’ he agreed dulcetly, smiling back at her. ‘I rather thought you weren’t.’ He stood up easily and crossed the room, looking out of the window into the street below, a piece of skilled social manoeuvring which he was well aware had taken her completely off guard.
He turned round in time to catch her affronted, querulous expression and smiled again; this time as he might have done at a spoilt, quarrelsome child.
‘Shall we dispense with the foreplay?’ he suggested evenly. ‘I believe my solicitor has informed you that Fitton Park is on the market and at what price… A fair price, I think, even given the dilapidation of the property. It would be insulting of me, having met you, to ask if you are aware of how much money will need to be spent on it to restore it.’
He paused, allowing the compliment to sink in, watching her battle with acceptance as she glared at him.
‘You obviously want the property, but you want something else as well. What is it?’
She turned her back on him and stalked across the expensively carpeted floor. Gloria Pilling was not used to being outflanked; married first at seventeen to the son of the wealthiest residents of the small farming community in which she had grown up, once she had realised that her husband was not prepared to indulge her financially in the way she wished she had divorced him and escaped to London, where there was far more scope for her talent.
It was there that she had met Harold Pilling, the millionaire industrialist, whose friends had thought him far too intelligent and aware to be caught in the trap so obviously being laid for him by a young woman less than half his age; a young woman who, moreover, carried all the hallmarks of being unashamedly in the market for a rich husband.
Harold Pilling hadn’t cared—he had wanted her and he had been prepared to pay for her—but neither had he been a complete fool. In return for her absolute faithfulness and obedience to their marriage vows he was prepared to give his new wife as much money as she could spend, but if he found out that Gloria was betraying him… if he discovered that she was indulging herself sexually with other men…
Gloria had accepted his terms, wondering cynically at the folly of the male sex. The sexual act to her was something to be despised and used; any pleasure to be gained from it was the pleasure of knowing one had the ascendancy over one’s partner… of knowing that he would be made to pay and pay again for the use of her flesh.
She had learned very young the value of her stunning face and figure and had relentlessly used them to further her own ambitions. Those ambitions were to be financially and socially secure… ambitions that only someone growing up in the kind of deprived household that had been hers as a child could really appreciate.
Her father had been a farm labourer, half crippled by rheumatism by the time she, his last child, was born. He had a savage temper when he was drunk, which was five days out of seven, and every one of his six children had felt the sting of his belt against their buttocks on more than one occasion.
But Gloria was cleverer than the rest; she had soon discovered that she had the means of making her father do as she wished.
The first time her mother had realised what was happening she had screamed at Gloria and threatened to banish her from the house, but Gloria’s father was the sole breadwinner, and Gloria’s mother was too deeply cowed by the privations of bearing and bringing up six children in a small, damp, insanitary cottage on wages that were little more than a pittance to hold out against the combined pressure of her husband and daughter for very long.
The cottage had four bedrooms; the four girls in the family slept in two, the two boys in another, and their parents in the fourth. By the time she was fourteen Gloria had a room to herself, her three sisters being squashed in together… a privilege for which she paid by allowing her grunting, sweati
ng father the freedom of her body into which to vent the frustrated bitterness of what he had made of his life.
No love existed between them; Gloria despised her father and felt almost equal contempt for her mother and siblings. Their life was not going to be hers.
She had watched her older sisters marry at seventeen and then eighteen and within months turn into drudges similar to their mother, slaves to the same urges that drove her father… that seemed to drive everyone but her.
She had a special gift. She was free of those urges… above them and yet able to generate them in others… able to make use of them to beguile and trap.
Before she was sixteen she had a small regular coterie of lovers, all of them chosen for what they could give her in exchange for the use of her body.
Her greatest triumph was the seduction of her form teacher, a desiccated, hungry-looking academic soured by a life of missed opportunities and by the dismal reality of his tarnished, once golden dreams.
He had dreamed of a glorious academic career at Oxford, of being feted and honoured by his peers; of a lifetime of pleasurable academic austerity.
Instead he had had the misfortune to get the daughter of his landlady pregnant while he was still taking his degree. He had been forced to marry her—a marriage which neither of them had wanted—and with a wife and child to support he had also been forced to take the first job he could find.
Too intimidated by his fear of public outrage, he had been unable to vent his fury and hatred of his wife in any way that could bring him satisfaction, and so instead he had turned his venom on his pupils.
Parents complained, headmasters instituted discreet enquiries, and slowly he had gradually moved to poorer and poorer schools.
The large secondary school Gloria attended was notorious for its poor results, for its lack of impetus… its teachers worn down by the ignorance of both its pupils and their parents.
Gloria, with that inbuilt instinct she possessed, had quickly realised the potential of Andrew Johnson. He hated her so much that it had amused her to seduce him, to reduce him to a trembling, gibbering wreck of pulsing need.
She made him pay for the humiliation and torment she gave him, the same way she made others pay: in hard cash.
Cash which she was gradually saving towards the day when she would eventually be able to escape.
Only, when she was sixteen, a catastrophe occurred. Her father dropped dead while he was working, killed by a sudden heart attack, and even before her husband was buried her mother announced that she was throwing Gloria out.
‘But where will I go?’ Gloria had protested, wide-eyed and innocent. Her mother had laughed bitterly.
‘Oh, you’ll find some bed to crawl into, I make no doubt, you little trollop.’
Quickly Gloria had assessed her options. She was sixteen years old and the only way she had of supporting herself was by the prostitution of her body; but if she did that, how long would it be before she was reduced to the same state as the women she had seen hanging around the back-street pubs of their local market town, women old before their time…? Gloria had no illusions about herself or the world. She was quite prepared to sell her flesh, but not for the price of a couple of drinks or a night’s fix. She wasn’t ready to leave home yet… She hadn’t saved enough. Panic seized her. She had four lovers at the moment, none of whom knew of the existence of the others.
Three months later she was pregnant by the only son of the farmer for whom her father had worked, and, despite all the hysterical accusations of his mother that she was nothing but a little tramp who had deliberately allowed herself to get pregnant, her twenty-one-year-old lover insisted on marrying her. It wasn’t long before they divorced.
Harold Pilling had imposed another condition on her when they’d married. He had no children of his own and, since he was now virtually impotent, had no hopes of fathering one. She, though, had a child… a daughter. He would only marry her on the condition that he was able to adopt the child as his own.
Gloria had been furious. When she had divorced her husband she had left her child with him. A child was the last encumbrance she wanted or needed; she didn’t want her now, but it seemed she had no choice.
It was purely by luck that she emerged victorious from the bloody custody battle that ensued. She had taken one look at the thin, plain eleven-year-old who was now legally in her care and let all her contempt for that plainness and misery show, but she had wanted marriage to Harold Pilling and she had been prepared to pay the price for that marriage, just as she was now prepared to pay the price for Fitton Park because she wanted what it and its owner could give her.
It was no longer enough for her simply to be wealthy… Now she wanted the cachet of being not just socially acceptable, but socially prominent as well.
She wanted to be on the charity committees whose notepaper carried the names of public figures like the Princess of Wales.
She wanted to be in the line-up of powerful and influential hostesses whose names were invariably associated with society’s most prestigious events.
The PR firm she had contacted to advise her on how best this goal might be achieved had suggested that acceptance by the élite of one of the country’s rural counties would weigh heavily in her favour and allow society to forget the publicity of her marriage to Harold Pilling.
She had taken their advice, disdaining the obviousness of Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds in favour of the quiet backwater of Cheshire.
She looked across at Jake, who was still waiting to learn what she wanted from him, and gave him the hard-edged, cold smile of a vulture.
There was no point in trying either seduction or deception on this one. It would have to be the truth.
‘What I want is an introduction into local society. Your solicitor tells me that you can provide one.’
It was more or less what he had expected. He let her wait for his reply, weighing practicality against pride and heritage. He was no snob; he took people as they were, appreciating them for what they were, and he already knew that the best among those families whose names belonged to the chronicles of Cheshire’s history would never admit her to the closed ranks of their friendship, not because of her birth, but because of her personality.
There were others, though, like Louise Davenport-Legh, who would use her for her wealth and allow her to use them for their social connections.
‘If I do buy Fitton Park, I shall wish to hold a New Year’s Eve ball there. I shall want you to supply me with a list of people I can invite, and I shall also want you to be there.’
He looked steadily at her.
‘Very well,’ he told her coolly. ‘But that will cost you an extra fifty thousand pounds.’
He saw the triumph in her eyes and added flatly, ‘That cheque is to be made out to a charity run to benefit the homeless.’
‘Most noble,’ she jeered, angry colour staining her immaculate skin. ‘But it doesn’t prove anything.’
‘It does to me,’ Jake told her silkily, and without saying so informed her that it was his own opinion of himself that mattered and not hers.
He left ten minutes later, knowing that he could probably have pushed her to pay another ten or twenty thousand pounds, but the game had already lost its savour.
Halfway down the corridor, he turned a corner and immediately collided with the girl running, head down, towards him.
He caught hold of her shoulders, bird-thin under the heavy cotton jumpsuit she was wearing, to steady her.
She had been running, and he could smell the fresh sweat scent of her skin. Her face, when she lifted it towards him, was flushed and hot.
She had brown hair and matching brown eyes set under thick, untidy eyebrows. The look she gave him was both embarrassed and defensive.
She looked about sixteen, and he guessed that she must be Gloria Pilling’s daughter.
She was nothing like her beautiful mother… not plain, exactly—there was a hint of soft femininity in the curves
of her face and body—but the way she ducked her head, the way she hunched her shoulders and backed off from him were defensive and prickly.
‘I’m sorry… I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
She had a soft, husky voice, and Jake wondered what she would look like if she smiled. She had a lovely mouth, her lips were soft and full, and he was shocked to discover that he was actually wondering what it would be like to kiss her.
It must be reaction to the overpowering sexuality of her mother, he decided grimly as he set her free. She was just a child.
Behind him he heard the suite door open, and Gloria Pilling say sharply, ‘Beth—come here at once. Where on earth have you been? You look dreadful…’
And as he released her the girl slunk past him, head down, face flushed, her body taut with resentment and humiliation.
He half turned back towards her and then stopped, irritated by his own helpless compassion for her. She wasn’t his concern, but he paused for a moment, caught on the brink of emotionalism, and yet knowing that if Fitton Park was to survive it needed an owner who could afford to cherish it.
Cherish it… For all he knew, Gloria Pilling might very well have plans to turn it into the sort of pseudo-period abomination that featured heavily in the pages of glossy magazines. Wryly acknowledging that there was perhaps at times more of his grandfather in him than he knew, he turned on his heel and headed for the lift.
‘You know what this agreement entails?’ his solicitor asked heavily.
The document in question lay on the desk between them and, with it, the contract for the sale of Fitton Park to Gloria Pilling.
‘I have read it,’ Jake answered drily.
He could see in the older man’s eyes the belief that he was selling himself along with the house, but made no attempt to defend himself.
‘Will you be able to fulfil that kind of commitment?’ the man asked him doubtfully.
