by Natalie Fox
Alexia stared at him. He was here, in this room, filling it to bursting point with his power and magnetism. 'What circumstances?' she asked.
'Insolvency looms, Alexia.'
'Indeed it does.' She smiled coldly. 'You know it and I know it but nevertheless that was a spiteful thing to open this conversation with.'
He raised a brow. 'Coming from one who knows,' he grated sarcastically.
Alexia steeled herself at that. The truth always hurt. 'What are you doing here?' she said at last.
'I promised a visit and this is it.'
She reached for the phone. 'I'll call the works manager up. He'll show you around.'
'Not your sweet self?'
Her fingers hesitated over the call button. 'I don't keep a dog and bark myself!'
He laughed and moved across the room to take the receiver from her hand and to replace it in its cradle. His fingers brushing hers were like an electric shock, unpleasant but at the same time heart-lurching. He looked tall and elegant and masterful and handsome and though she desperately hyped herself to hate him it was only fractionally successful. If he were to reach out to her she just might go to him so she put herself out of temptation's way and moved to the window, leaning back against the windowsill to face him.
He straddled her chair, leaning his arms on the back of it to look at her.
'So, you are still interested,' she said.
He smiled that tantalising half-smile of his that irritated her yet sometimes delighted her, depending on what he was smiling at. Now she was irritated.
'Is that a personal question?'
'This is my office, Harry, in my factory, in my working time. Nothing personal goes on here.'
He unstraddled himself from the chair and came towards her. Her heart ground to a halt as he stopped in front of her. His hand came up and he grazed his thumb across her hot lips.
'That sounded like a very tempting challenge to me.'
'It wasn't,' she croaked painfully. 'And don't you dare touch me again.'
'Or dare kiss you?' His eyes gleamed with mockery. The big tease again.
'Least of all that! What exactly did you come here for, Harry? To ram what happened at the weekend down my throat?'
'You said that, not me.'
'Stop it, will you? Just say your piece and let me get back to work.' He was blocking her way to the rest of the room and if she wanted to get past him she would have to push at him and she didn't want to touch him.
'I tried to say my piece on our last morning together iii Wales but you were so bitchy I couldn't get a word in.'
'Read honest for bitchy and we might get somewhere,' she lanced back.
'You were acting irrationally and hysterically, Alexia.'
'Yes, I was acting like a typical female, which I am, of course.' Her voice was thick with sarcasm.
His eyes darkened. 'A typical female you are not, Alexia, but at times a bitch you are.'
He could still hurt her; in spite of all her resolve he had the power. And it was because she loved him that she felt it so acutely. An insult like that from anyone but him would have no sting.
'So I'm a bitch; any more home truths coming from where that came from? Or will I have to wait till Friday for the next verbal onslaught?'
'I could throw the book of aspersions at you but too much of a good thing in one go isn't always wise, as we both well know,' he landed back at her.
'Wise, eh? I'm glad you finally realise that last weekend wasn't a particularly bright thing to do.'
'Which brings me back to one of the reasons I'm here today.'
'Fire away!'
'Wales wasn't wise at all in the circumstances. You were right all along, Alexia, and I was very wrong. For that I apologise and hope you accept it.'
She did push him then, because she couldn't take any more of this. Her hands came up to brush him out of the way. He caught them, gripped them warmly and then raised them to his mouth.
'Don't,' she pleaded, and he stopped and merely smoothed his hands over hers clasped in his.
'Because it's painful to feel my touch?'
Agonisingly so, and he knew and that was worse. Determinedly she wriggled her hands free.
'No, it's not painful,' she lied, 'just very out of place in my office at the moment.'
'And would you feel differently if we were both in that four-poster in Wales?'
She shook her head miserably. Couldn't he see what he was doing to her? 'And a reminder like that is equally out of place in my office,' she murmured.
He tilted her head up to look deeply into her chestnut eyes. 'As always, right again, Alexia. This is the whole problem between us. We are letting our personal feelings interfere where they are not wanted or needed at the moment. That's what I was trying to tell you last weekend. We should have settled our negotiations before --'
'Going to bed with each other?' she finished for him. She jerked her head and pushed past him. She slumped down at her desk before he could stop her, putting four feet of mahogany between them. 'What difference? Before or after, it shouldn't have happened at all!'
He stepped towards the desk and leaned towards her with his palms on the top. 'That is something we may or may not pick up on later. For the moment, Alexia, we must put the whole episode behind us. Forget it happened, because there is something far more important to deal with. Do I or do I not take over Stroben?'
She stared at him and her whole being froze. How could he be so cold and calculating? To dismiss what had happened so bluntly. But... but he was right and that was the tragedy of it all. He was thinking like the successful financier he was and she was thinking like someone she had never thought she was. A woman in love and with emotions that were hurting very badly. Still in love with him knowing it wasn't returned? She must be some gullible fool.
'I thought we had arranged to talk this over on Friday,' she husked.
'That's another reason I'm here. I can't make Friday lunchtime as arranged, so I'll drop by your house some time during the evening. Can't give a specific time unfortunately...'
'It wouldn't matter if you could, I won't be there.' Her decision was instantaneous. She didn't want him in her home. Why, that was no different from meeting on his home ground and look where that had led. 'I'm out Friday night; a dinner engagement, ' she told him quickly. A lie but one that had leapt out in defence and to punish as well. She hoped to hurt him as he was hurting her.
'Aha, the iceberg is melting.'
'I didn't say I was meeting a man.' She hadn't but she'd wanted him to believe that she was.
'Nor did I,' he frowned, 'but now I know and thanks for the information. Glad to be of service to you over the weekend!'
Alexia flushed deeply at the suggestive tone of his voice. He honestly thought he had paved the way for her return to the land of the living. She wished she hadn't started this because it was childish and he wasn't capable of being hurt anyway.
'Glad I was of service to you!' she retorted when her colour returned to normal.
'Oh, dear,' he drawled sarcastically. 'There was I thinking that parting would make your heart grow fonder but you're as caustic as ever.'
'And your arrogance grows by the hour!'
He stood up, came round the desk to her and ran his hands through her hair. 'You really do have nerves of steel, Alexia. You're playing Russian roulette with your company and I'm your saviour, yet you can't stop baiting me. I could so easily pull out, you know.'
'I wish you would!' she blazed, amazed at her own stupidity. She really was acting very dangerously. If he did pull out...
'Spoken in spite again. I wonder if the time will come when you will ever speak what comes from your heart?'
She eyed him coldly. 'I haven't got one, Harry, thanks to you.'
His eyes hardened. 'Is that how you're coping with what happened over the weekend, Alexia? Resurrecting old hurts? Once again blaming me for the lost love of your life?'
She hadn't meant that, not at all. Rex
wasn't a consideration here but she was hardly going to admit that to him now. Let him believe that and it might help. Her lips thinned. 'If you are willing to make a sensible offer for Stroben Engineering we can continue this conversation; if not would you kindly go? I have work to do.'
She imagined she saw his shoulders sag in resignation but she couldn't trust her imagination any more. He walked to the door and turned to her when he got there. 'I'll see you Friday night after your date. Or will he be staying the night?'
She wondered what powered his cruelty. Her sharp thrusts were powered by her breaking heart but he must be doing it for the sheer fun of it. She raised her chin defiantly. 'Probably, it depends how the mood takes me.' She wished that retort were capable of hurting him because it had hurt her enough to say it. No man after him, not ever.
He shook his head. 'I doubt that, Alexia. After what I've learned about you I suspect I might be the only man alive who can give you what you want. I'll see you Friday.'
He closed the door behind him and Alexia's narrowed eyes lasered poison darts into the back of the door. Of all the bastards he was the king of them all. How dared he insinuate he had that sort of sexual power over her?
But it took a further twenty-four hours before the true meaning of his words began to hit her, and it had nothing to do with his virility.
Alexia Townsend's world was falling apart. By the time Friday lunchtime came she was sick with worry, sick but furious too. Two of their biggest clients had drastically reduced their usual annual orders, another had pulled out altogether and a supplier had refused to deliver a vital shipment of cable without a substantial payment up-front, one she couldn't meet without serious repercussions on their already shaky finances. The downward slide to bankruptcy was gathering pace and she knew these lost orders wouldn't be the last.
And she knew without a doubt who was behind it all. Harry Masters. She dialled his City number to tell him exactly what she thought of him only to be informed he was out of the country.
She slammed down the receiver, leaned back in her chair and kneaded her forehead. He'd be back tonight because now she knew for sure why he'd insisted on coming to her home after her imaginary date. He wanted to put the knife in after bringing her company to its knees.
'What the hell's got into you, Alexia?' Roland flamed, flinging the bleak weekly order sheet on to her desk.
This was the second time this week Roland had reprimanded her and she knew she deserved it. She was losing her professionalism and letting her personal life interfere with her judgement.
'You should at least have listened to Petersfield's offer instead of dismissing them --'
'I'd already decided to sell to Harry Masters and nothing Petersfield could offer would make any difference!' Alexia stormed back. Now she was beginning to wonder if that decision was the right one.
Roland furiously raked a hand through his silvery hair. 'So far I haven't heard anything constructive in this offer from Masters, if it exists! What the devil are you hiding from me, Alexia?'
She was hiding her love for Harry, that was what. Love had spurred the decision not to consider Petersfield. She couldn't do that to Harry after him waiting all those years.
'I just think he's the best person to take us over, Roland. He has enormous resources. He's heavily into Europe and that's what UK companies need to survive. Petersfield is too...too parochial. I'm having a final meeting with Ha... Masters tonight and I'll fill you in on Monday morning.'
Roland sighed. 'OK, Alexia, do it your way, but I just hope you know what you're doing!'
Truth was, she didn't. She considered that after Roland had left. Love was clouding her judgement. If she'd agreed to Petersfield's offer she would never see Harry again. She could picture his fury and that fury would finish it all for good. Finish what, she asked herself ruefully, an affair that was doomed from the start anyway? And how could she still love a man who had done what he'd done this week, scuppered their order books till they were sinking like lead bricks?
With that thought she spurred herself out that evening. She couldn't sit in waiting for him, her nerves couldn't take that. She went to the cinema to see a much-acclaimed foreign film and came out none the wiser. It hadn't grabbed her and taken her mind away from Harry and she wondered if anything ever would.
His Jaguar was in the drive when she got home and her heart started that curious thudding which made her feel weak and ineffectual against him. She willed the feeling away because she needed her wits about her.
She locked her car and walked over to his. He was sound asleep in the driver's seat, his dark head slumped to one side. She watched him for a few seconds through the open window. He looked exhausted and her heart tore. She wanted to reach out and smooth the side of his face, to love and caress away his fatigue.
Blindly she turned away from him. Let him stay out there all night; what did she care?
She opened her front door and went straight to the kitchen to plug in the coffee machine.
'Not at all what I expected,' he yawned, and Alexia swung round.
He stood in the doorway, travel-crumpled and weary. His shirt was open at the collar and his burgundy silk tie hung loose around his neck. The evening was warm and he held his suit jacket -in one hand, letting it trail on the quarry-tiled floor. There was an ominous hold-all at his feet.
He intended staying the night! Alexia's hand froze around the coffee container.
'What's not what you expected?' she asked quietly and turned back to the coffee-pot to shovel spoonfuls of ground coffee into the filter.
'This place. I thought you would have revamped it after your father died.'
Alexia frowned. 'You've been here before?' He must have done. Lane House was well off the beaten track and she had never told him where she lived.
'A few times.'
'Why?' She turned back to him.
'You know why.'
'Oh, yes, of course. When you were hassling my father to sell to you!' Her voice was so sharp and derisive that he winced as if he had a headache.
'Back to all that again, are we?' His hand came up and kneaded his forehead. 'And there was I expecting a warm, welcoming hostelry after an exhausting business trip. Would it help if I went out and came back in again?'
'It'll make no difference, Harry,' she told him bluntly. She opened a kitchen drawer and took out a bottle of aspirins and tossed them to him. 'You weren't invited here tonight, though it looks as if you came prepared for the night.' She shot a look of contempt towards the hold-all at his feet.
'You're near the airport and I've had a helluva time in Paris. I couldn't face the rest of the drive home tonight.' He tipped out a couple of aspirins into his palm and tossed them to the back of his throat.
Alexia shuddered and turned back to the coffee. So he needed a bed for the night—probably hers!
'Now don't tell me an enterprising chauvinist such as yourself,' she mimicked, 'couldn't have found a way round that one. You could have got a taxi, or swallowed your pride and hitched a lift in the airport caterers' --'
'Leave it alone, Alexia. I can't take your sarcasm tonight.'
Surprisingly, she didn't grind on but watched him sling his jacket wearily over the back of the kitchen chair and slump down into it. He really was exhausted. She poured two coffees and placed his in front of him.
'Drink it, it'll liven you up.'
'It's going to be one of those nights, is it?' he said meaningfully, though not altogether enthusiastically.
Alexia sat across from him. 'More than likely. The roads are always bad on a Friday night,' she told him with a sweet smile.
He grinned at her. 'Throwing me out, are you? Is there no end to your cruelty, Alexia?'
'None,' she retorted. 'What's wrong with a hotel for the night—or has your gold card run out?'
He held her eyes across the shabby Formica table and said very quietly, 'I fancied a bit of homely cosiness this weekend. Breakfast in bed, the weekend reviews, making love t
o you.'
Alexia lowered her eyes. What a painful reminder of last weekend in his beautiful home. But hers wasn't homely or cosy and she felt deeply ashamed of it. Suddenly she saw it all in a new light. She'd been so involved with Stroben that she had neglected it badly. No one to do it up for. Why was she thinking this way when the point that hurt most was his expecting to make love to her?
'Is that what you came here for, Harry,' she uttered painfully, 'to carry on where we left off last weekend?'
'Is it possible?' It was asked so sincerely that her heart murmured dreamily.
Suddenly she shook her head. It wasn't at all possible. 'For what purpose?'
'Pleasure, Alexia, or have you already forgotten the headiness of our lovemaking?'
She shot to her feet. How could she ever forget? It was etched on her soul, embedded in her heart, forevermore a reminder that there could never be anyone else in her life. Pleasure, he'd said; was that all it was to him? Shakily she picked up the coffeepot.
'There is too much between us to ever pleasure ourselves again,' she told him crisply. 'And I wonder at your nerve in suggesting it after what you've done to Stroben this week.'
She topped up their coffee-mugs and sat down again. He was frowning and she wondered if his headache was still troubling him. She hoped it developed into a whopping migraine.
'It will always be between us, won't it? Well, let's get it over and done with. Yes, I'll take it. Stroben with all its problems --'
'The problems you so cleverly manipulated, Harry Masters, for your own ends!'
His eyes narrowed. 'And what exactly do you mean by that?'
'As if you didn't know!'
His hand slammed down on the table making Alexia jump. 'I wouldn't bloody ask if I knew!'
Why couldn't he just admit it instead of making her squirm this way? 'I lost some good orders this week and one of my best suppliers welshed on an order, demanding payment up-front, a payment I can't make. And I know why you did it—so that I'd take your offer tonight, at any price!'
She'd shocked him. He held her eyes with such deep intensity that she wavered.
