The Tycoon's Takeover

by Liz Fielding

  And not just guilt for her. There must have been guilt for Jordan, too, believing he’d been the cause of her pain.

  And she shivered.

  ‘Oh, here. You’re cold.’ He slipped off his jacket, walked back to her and put it round her shoulders, settling it around her, enveloping her in the warmth from his own body. He held the jacket edges for a moment, his gaze fixed on something of intense interest at his feet. Then he took a breath, looked up, met her gaze head-on, and without warning the brick wall crumbled. ‘Shall we take the last twenty minutes from the top?’ he said. ‘Try it again without rattling the skeletons in the Claibourne & Farraday closet?’

  Skeletons? What skeletons?

  No, she wasn’t going to ask. She had to know, but not tonight. They’d reclaimed tonight—done the impossible and set the clock back—and she was saying nothing to risk fracturing their fragile truce. It was enough to have confirmation that there was something. Enough to have him smiling at her.

  Definitely no skeletons. She scanned her brain for some neutral subject. Something safe. Something that would bring the smile back to his eyes. Cricket? That had to be safe, didn’t it? And, coming from her, there was no chance he’d take it seriously. She cleared her throat a little self-consciously and said, ‘So…what do you think of England’s chances in the Test Match?’

  The corner of his mouth lifted promisingly and it was as if he’d turned on her own personal central heating system, all her senses warming in response to him. It was going to be all right. All right.

  ‘Would that be the Lord’s Test?’

  ‘There’s more than one?’ she asked, betraying her total ignorance of the game. Well, she’d wanted him laughing. Wanted to distract him from the memories that haunted him. ‘Damn it, Jordan, it was that or the weather, and I thought you might find cricket marginally more interesting. Help me out here.’

  ‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you. To Lord’s.’

  ‘Will you?’ She tried to sound enthusiastic, but didn’t that mean six days on a hard wooden seat? ‘Aren’t tickets terribly hard to get?’ she replied unenthusiastically. ‘I wouldn’t want to deprive a real fan—’

  He threw back his head and laughed. ‘I’ll take that as a no, shall I?’ he said, putting his arm around her shoulders, tucking her in close to him beneath his arm. It was a good place to be.

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought cricket would be safe.’

  ‘We don’t have to talk.’

  ‘No.’

  And rather more slowly they continued their stroll along the embankment, this time in a silence that wasn’t awkward or difficult. Just peaceful. Far too soon they reached Westminster Pier and the waiting Daimler.

  He had a word with the driver, then opened the door for her. She slid across the seat and he joined her in the back. ‘Thank you for tonight, Jordan. The concert was wonderful. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.’

  ‘I did rather gamble that the prospect of hearing the performance might outweigh the downside of the company you’d be forced to keep.’

  ‘The company was—’ she waggled her free hand ‘—okay.’ But her smile was meant to tell him that she’d found his company very special. At least she hoped it did. Then, because she had to say something about what happened on the bridge, ‘I just wish—’

  ‘Shh…’ He took her hand, raised it briefly to his lips. ‘I know.’ Then he held it on the seat between them as the car sped towards her Chelsea apartment.

  He saw her to her door. Waited while she opened it and switched off the alarm. She slipped off his jacket before turning to him with it. He was leaning against the doorframe, watching her from beneath heavy-lidded eyes. It was a look that brought her whole body to urgent, demanding life.

  He was right about it being too long, but that wasn’t why she wanted to grab his shirt and drag him inside. Kiss him stupid, the way he’d kissed her, before taking him to her bed and staying there for a week.

  What she was feeling went way beyond sexual attraction. That was simply the physical manifestation of an emotional pair-bonding. Jordan Farraday had been on her mind, day and night, for more than two months. Filling her thoughts, driving her actions. She was as familiar with his photograph as she was with her own face in the mirror. Every day she’d looked at it and asked herself what it would take to get him off her back.

  But she didn’t want him off her back any more. She just wanted him. In her life, in her heart—

  She’d known the truth from the moment she’d first set eyes on the real flesh and blood Jordan Farraday. It had been like an electrical charge. Switching her on. Lighting her up. Watching him hold that girl’s hand, she’d known without doubt that under similar circumstances she’d want him at her side. No one else. Holding her hand. Never letting go.

  He might be arrogant, but his was the arrogance of strength. He knew his worth. And, like all truly strong men, he knew how to be tender.

  In that moment she’d recognised her perfect partner. Her soul mate. She would never meet another man like him, and she was afraid that if they didn’t take the moment, right now, then this stupid, pointless dispute would come between them and something that could have been truly special would be lost for ever.

  She’d come close to throwing it away tonight, on Waterloo Bridge, in a rush of certainty that all the charm, all the charged looks, were nothing but a cynical attempt to turn her head, seduce her out of the store. She’d turned the tables, switching him off with her less than subtle temptress routine—letting him know that she wasn’t fooled when all she’d really wanted to do was turn him on.

  And still she didn’t really know whether, for him, this was all a game. Whether he’d been truly shocked by her performance, or whether he’d caught on to the fact that he’d have to play it much cooler.

  She wasn’t even sure if she cared.

  She reached up, hooked her hair behind her ear. ‘Would you like to come in—?’

  His finger touched her lips, stopping the words. Then, with her face cradled in his hand, he kissed her forehead before taking his jacket, turning abruptly and walking swiftly away down the hall to the lift.

  ‘—for a cup of coffee?’ she completed, talking to herself.

  She shut the door, and leaned against it. Who was she kidding?

  He’d seen what she wanted in her eyes. Stopped her before she did something she’d regret, more than anything, for the rest of her life. Except not doing it.

  A long peal on the doorbell made her jump. He’d changed his mind…come back…

  She fumbled with the catch, hands shaking, and threw back the door—

  ‘India, darling, where have you been? I haven’t got a tea-leaf to my name.’

  It took a moment for the reality, the heart-wrenching disappointment, to sink in. The kind of disappointment that stripped away all pretence and left the heart naked. She wanted Jordan Farraday more than she wanted Claibourne’s. True.

  Then, still hanging onto the door with one hand, she waved her other in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Help yourself, George. Take whatever you want…’

  He was almost passed her when he stopped, turned to take a second look. ‘India?’ She was leaning against the door because if she let it go she’d crumple up on the floor. ‘Hey, babe, what’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’ But the tears welling up and running unchecked down her cheek betrayed her. ‘Everything,’ she admitted.

  He detached her gently from the life support of the door, holding her as he pushed it shut. ‘Want to tell me about it?’

  What was there to tell? She’d fallen in love with the wrong man. A man common sense told her was the last man she should ever get involved with. A man her heart was telling her was the only man in the world for her. ‘I don’t want to want him, George,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ He produced a handkerchief.

  She ignored it. ‘It doesn’t matter who,’ she said, with a long shuddering sigh. ‘I can’t have him.’

&nbs
p; ‘I assume we’re talking about Jordan Farraday?’ He shrugged apologetically when she looked up from his shoulder. ‘I read the papers, sweetie. I thought maybe it was going to be wedding number three—’

  Which was when she turned into his arms and, for the first time since her pet rabbit had died when she was eight years old, sobbed her heart out.

  It was getting to be a habit. Walking away from India’s apartment when staying seemed like such a great idea. Shaking with a desire so intense that he felt weak. He leaned against the gleaming roof of the car for a moment, taking deep breaths.

  The driver got out. ‘Are you okay, Mr Farraday?’

  ‘Just suffering from a bad dose of mixing business with pleasure, Bryan.’ He straightened, stepped back, clamped his jaw tight for a moment. ‘I’ll get over it.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He opened the car door for him. ‘Eaton Square, is it?’

  At least he didn’t have to drive tonight. He could sit in the back and congratulate himself that his plan was working better than he could have imagined in his wildest dreams.

  Tell himself that he would have his revenge on the Claibournes and walk away happy.

  Yeah, right.

  If everything was so great, why was feeling as if he’d just torn his heart out and left it in India Claibourne’s beautiful hands?

  He’d seen hot desire in her eyes tonight, a longing that seemed to chime with everything he was feeling. There had been real desire in her eyes in that moment before she’d transformed herself into something else. Something way too calculating. It had brought him up cold.

  Maybe, just now, it had been real. But that was the problem. He’d never know whether it was him she wanted, or his surrender. It shouldn’t matter. If he was going to break her heart, why would it matter?

  But it did.

  He looked up at the penthouse windows. Then, before he lost it completely, went back up there, gave away his heart and everything else he had to offer, he said, ‘No, Bryan. I need to get out of London tonight.’ His Eaton Square apartment was nowhere near far enough away from temptation. ‘Take me home.’

  George made a great listener. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t ask questions. He simply let her hiccup the whole story out in her own way.

  ‘So you see, it’s all a mess. He doesn’t want me.’ He looked doubtful. ‘Tonight… I would have… Wanted to…’ She sniffed, rubbed her hands over her wet cheeks. ‘All he wants is the store.’

  ‘Then give it to him.’

  ‘Claibourne & Farraday?’

  ‘He’s going to take it from you anyway, unless you can find this letter, so what’s the big deal? If you hand it over, it’s your decision. You’re in charge. Walk away and he might realise that some things are more important than a fancy emporium with your name over the door.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’

  ‘Life doesn’t come with guarantees, babe. You have to decide what’s important to you, what you can’t live without. I may just be an old romantic, but I’d always put people before property. Jordan Farraday is unique. Let’s face it, you can always open another store.’

  Jordan didn’t sleep. He spent the night in the book-lined study of the Berkshire manor house that was the family home, the room that had once been his grandfather’s private haven, going through the cuttings files. Looking for something…anything… He didn’t know what, exactly. Just something to explain why he was so obsessed with India Claibourne.

  It was Peter Claibourne he wanted to hurt…but she was the one who haunted his dreams.

  There were streaks of light in the sky when he opened the page at a photograph of her that had appeared in a society magazine on her eighteenth birthday. An almost identical photograph of his mother stood on the desk in front of him in an antique silver frame. The debutante ‘frock’…the mandatory row of pearls at the throat.

  He looked for a long time at the photograph of India, stunningly beautiful, poised on the brink of womanhood. He thought about her eyes that flashed and sparkled with challenge or defiance one moment, then were soft as a puppy’s the next. Her mouth…her sweet, hot mouth that drove everything from his mind but her.

  And as his fingers moved by themselves to outline her hair, as if to tuck it behind her ear, everything fell into place.

  India Claibourne. She’d been there, under his skin, for as long as he could remember. A constant reminder of what his mother had suffered. An irritant that sometimes faded but could never quite be forgotten.

  A thorn so deeply embedded in his flesh that it could never be plucked out.

  ‘I’d given up on you,’ Sally said, when she came back from lunch and found India working at her desk. ‘You and JD Farraday,’ she added pointedly.

  India, distracted from what she was doing, glanced up from her laptop. ‘I worked most of the night. Since we’ve got Maureen’s party tonight, I thought I’d better catch up on some sleep before I came in.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘I worked alone and I slept alone.’

  ‘Are you telling me that rumours of a hot romance are entirely without foundation?’ She dropped the first edition of the Post on her desk. ‘The moonlit walk along the embankment was, what? Nothing more than a shortage of taxis?’

  India grabbed the paper, read the diary column and groaned. ‘Who is doing this to me?’

  ‘Maybe it’s him they’re doing it to.’

  ‘Well, not any more. It’s over.’

  ‘Over?’ Sally dropped into a chair, propped her elbows on the desk, her chin in her hands. ‘As in over? He’s thrown in the towel? Admitted you’re better at this than he could ever be?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard. No, I’ve made some decisions of my own. About the future. Since they’ll affect you, too, I want you to know exactly what I’m doing before the rumours start flying about.’

  And she turned the laptop so that Sally could see the screen, waiting while her secretary scrolled slowly down the proposal she had spent all night putting together.

  ‘You’re surrendering the store in return for permission to use the name “India Claibourne” as your own company name, and the “C” product range,’ she said at last. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘I’ve spent years trying to get young people through the doors of C&F. Last night it was as if a veil had fallen. This isn’t the place for them.’ Something Jordan had said had finally clicked into place. ‘I’m going to open my own store. Young designers, new labels. What do you think?’

  ‘And what happened to the “over my dead body” declaration?’

  ‘I’m accepting reality, Sally. If I have to give up the store, I want to do it on my own terms.’

  ‘If?’

  ‘When,’ she corrected. ‘When I have to give up the store.’ She’d had a double whammy this morning. ‘I spoke to the lawyers this morning. Counsel’s opinion is that my equal opportunities argument will not impress the courts. Treated equally—in other words, taking any question of gender out of the equation—it comes down to age. Jordan has an eight-year head start on me.’

  And her call to Maureen, a last ditch hope that she might have found a match for the handwriting or notepaper, had proved fruitless.

  The letter—if it existed—would have put them on an equal footing, but the truth was that it no longer mattered. George had said it last night. She could always open another store. She wasn’t going to allow this one to stand between her and Jordan.

  ‘You’re in love with him,’ Sally said, not unsympathetically. ‘He’s knocked you sideways with dinner at Giovanni’s, a bunch of kittens, stolen kisses on the back stairs—’

  ‘Someone saw us…?’ Who was she kidding? Of course someone would have seen… ‘Is there nothing I’ve done in the last few days that hasn’t been in the Post?’

  ‘Only you can answer that.’ Then, ‘You know this is what he wants, don’t you? That he’s romancing you right out of the front door? He’s got your little hormones so excited that you can’t think straight.’<
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  ‘Just print that out for me, Sally. And fax it to the lawyers with a covering note this afternoon. I want this settled. Finished.’ Then maybe there could be a new beginning.

  Jordan had been held up in traffic and he was late for Maureen’s farewell party. Everyone else had arrived, and he paused in the doorway of the Roof Garden Restaurant looking for India. The crowd shifted, parted briefly, and he caught a glimpse of her, her back to him, talking to a group of people. Caught a glimpse. Caught his breath.

  India was dressed to kill. Or at least to cause grievous bodily harm. And her chosen weapon was a slender, close-fitting dress with no visible means of support. The kind of dress that giftwrapped a woman. Made a man believe it was his birthday and Christmas all rolled into one.

  Her jet hair, gifted from her mother’s gene pool, swung in a sharp, glossy bob. Her jewellery—a choker and wrist-cuffs of gold wire—made her look like a queen. And so she was. Holding court in her kingdom.

  Listening intently to one of her guests, she hadn’t noticed his arrival, but as the crowds parted for him her companions did and conversation died. Into the void he said, ‘I’ve got a complaint, India. You’ve got me here under false pretences.’

  India, warned by the sudden shift of attention, knew Jordan was at her back the second before he spoke. And every cell in her body lifted a little. Became lighter.

  She’d been avoiding the door to the restaurant. She’d spent the first fifteen minutes after she’d arrived looking round every time someone entered, then, catching Sally’s pitying look, she’d turned her back on it and concentrated on her guests.

  Now, as she turned, looked up, her mouth dried and she could say nothing.

  ‘I was promised the first dance by the Managing Director,’ he continued, addressing the entire group. ‘But there doesn’t appear to be a dance floor.’

  ‘Looks can be deceiving,’ Sally said, abandoning her boyfriend at the first sign of fun in order to join them. ‘We’re dancing outside on the terrace, since it’s such a lovely night. Of course you might prefer to take Indie on to a club. Just so that the Post has something to write about tomorrow.’