Trust in Summer Madness

by Carole Mortimer

  New York came as a complete shock to her. Noisy and rushed, it had a charm that wasn’t apparent in the television programmes that were set there. Sian felt no surprise when the cab dropped her off outside one of the high-rise buildings, King Construction Company printed in large gold letters over the long row of glass doors. She hadn’t even booked into a hotel, but had come here straight from the airport. She would have plenty of time to find a hotel later if Jarrett threw her straight out! It would be no more than she deserved, she knew that.

  The girls behind the reception desk gave her a curious glance, but none of them questioned her ascent in the lift to the top floor. Well, at least she hadn’t been stopped at the front door!

  She had never seen an office complex as luxurious as this one, and she walked through a whole office of busy secretaries before she finally came to the office of Jarrett’s private secretary, a beautiful redhead in her early thirties.

  Sian straightened her shoulders as the woman looked up at her enquiringly, then she walked determinedly over to the desk. ‘I’d like to see Mr King, please. My name is Sian Morrissey. I’m—’

  ‘Miss Morrissey,’ the other woman gave her a friendly smile. ‘I know exactly who you are.’

  Sian felt as if the breath had been knocked from her body. ‘You—you do?’ she croaked.

  ‘Of course,’ the secretary nodded. ‘I’ll just tell Mr King you’re here. Please take a seat,’ she invited with another beaming smile.

  ‘Er—thanks.’ Sian sat down before she fell down, putting her case beside the chair.

  ‘Mr King?’ the secretary, the nameplate on her desk reading ‘Carmen Ferris’, spoke into the internal telephone. ‘Your fiancée is here, Jarrett,’ she told him warmly. ‘Jarrett?’ she frowned as she obviously received no answer. ‘Did you hear me, I said—That’s right,’ she glanced over at Sian, giving her a smile of confidence. ‘I’ll tell her.’ She rang off, and rose elegantly to her feet.

  Sian watched her approach with misgivings. Was she to be rejected without even getting to see the man himself? And what on earth had prompted Carmen Ferris to announce her as his fiancée! Jarrett probably wondered what game she was playing now!

  ‘He told me to ask if you would mind waiting?’ She gave a rueful shrug at the delay. ‘He’s in with his lawyer at the moment. I could get you a cup of coffee?’ she offered pleasantly.

  ‘I—That would be nice,’ Sian accepted jerkily.

  The woman swayed over to the pot of fresh coffee, pouring a cup for Sian and putting it on a tray with cream and sugar. ‘Did you just fly over?’ She eyed the single suitcase Sian had with her.

  ‘Er—yes.’ She chewed on her inner lip. ‘Why did you introduce me as Jarrett’s fiancée just now?’

  Carmen looked surprised by the question. ‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’ she frowned.

  ‘I—’

  The inner office door opened at that moment and a short stocky man preceded Jarrett out of the room, and the two men shook hands as Jarrett walked the lawyer to the door.

  Sian took this opportunity to take in everything about him. His hair had been cut since the last time she had seen him, although it still curled attractively over the collar of his brown suit and cream shirt. His face looked leaner, harsher, his eyes hard as he turned to find her avid gaze on him. Those hard green eyes made her conscious of her own appearance, of the grey suit and black high-necked blouse she had worn for the flight over here. Could he see that she had lost weight, that her eyes were shadowed, that she had an unhappy droop to her mouth? Or did he no longer care enough to notice anything about her?

  ‘Sian,’ he bit out tersely as he walked across the room towards her, his hands on her shoulders drawing her to her feet. ‘Let’s go through to my office,’ he suggested grimly as she quivered beneath his touch. ‘Hold all my calls, Carmen,’ he told the curious secretary abruptly, opening the leather-covered door for Sian to enter the inner office before him.

  She had half expected the luxury that met her behind that door, the vast office that looked more like an elegant, if austere, lounge than any office she had ever seen. The only concession to an office that she could see was the huge mahogany desk in front of the window. There were also several boxes in the process of being packed with the impressive looking books from the mahogany bookcase.

  ‘Excuse the mess,’ Jarrett said curtly. ‘Most of this is due to be shipped out on Friday.’

  ‘Shipped out?’ She turned to look at him, finding the door closed behind him now, so that the room was completely soundproofed. ‘To England, you mean?’ she frowned.

  His mouth twisted. ‘Of course.’

  Sian moistened her lips nervously, ‘You still intend going through with the move to Swannell?’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded distantly. ‘Although a smaller office will be maintained here. Sit down, won’t you,’ he invited tersely.

  ‘I—I’m not sure I shall be staying’ she hesitated.

  Dark blond brows rose. ‘You hardly came all the way to New York to leave without even saying hello,’ he derided.

  Sian dropped down into the waiting leather chair, sinking into its dark brown luxuriousness. She doubted she would be able to get out of it in a hurry! Although she couldn’t see any reason why she would need to.

  Jarrett faced her across the width of his desk, and she saw him as business opponents must see him. Formidable! His position across the desk from her also reminded her that now they were even farther apart socially; Jarrett was a successful millionaire, while she was a mere receptionist/typist. She must have been mad to come here!

  His eyes narrowed to green slits. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m thinking I made a mistake coming here. I’m sure you—’

  ‘Never be too sure of anything about me, Sian,’ he warned softly. ‘Sit down!’ he ordered as she tried to get to her feet, the chair proving as difficult as she had thought it would.

  Her eyes widened indignantly before she lowered herself back into the chair, watching him apprehensively.

  His mouth twisted. ‘Surprised, aren’t you?’ he derided harshly. ‘I think I was always too soft with you—’

  ‘Too soft?’ she repeated in an outraged voice. ‘You’ve always bullied and bossed me around!’

  ‘And you always knew how to reduce me to an eager lover,’ he rasped. ‘I should never have given in to you the first time you captured me with those huge hazel eyes of yours. I’d never let a woman call the tune in a relationship before, and I shouldn’t have let you do it either.’

  ‘But you—’

  ‘Why are you here, Sian?’ he asked impatiently. ‘You surely didn’t come all this way to argue with me?’

  Suddenly she couldn’t meet his piercing gaze; her anger died as quickly as it had flared. ‘No,’ she admitted huskily.

  ‘Then why?’ he bit out.

  Sian swallowed hard. ‘Your secretary called me your fiancée.’ She couldn’t answer him.

  He shrugged broad shoulders beneath the expensively tailored jacket. ‘Carmen has worked for me for three years, she worked for my uncle before that,’ he said as if that explained everything.

  But it didn’t, not to Sian. ‘You mean you’ve never denied our engagement?’ she gasped.

  His mouth tightened. ‘No.’

  ‘But Arlette—’

  ‘Yes—Arlette,’ he drawled coldly, glancing at his wrist-watch. ‘She should be here any moment. Your timing in arriving today is perfect, Sian. You may be able to help me celebrate the removal of Arlette from my life.’

  She paled. ‘I’d better leave—’

  ‘You will stay exactly where you are,’ he told her grimly. ‘I haven’t finished talking to you yet. Far from it!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You’re staying, Sian.’ He stood up to come round the desk, completely menacing. ‘If I have to tie you to the chair!’

  At that moment the door swung open unannounced, the familiar figure of Arlette King moving g
racefully into the room as the door swung shut behind her. ‘Why, Miss Morrissey—how nice,’ she drawled in a falsely sugary tone. ‘I didn’t know Miss Morrissey was to be here, Jarrett,’ she looked at him questioningly.

  Jarrett leant back on the side of his desk. ‘Sian is full of surprises,’ he mocked.

  ‘How nice for you,’ Arlette taunted.

  ‘It can be,’ he nodded.

  Hard blue eyes were turned on Sian. ‘How are you, Miss Morrissey—or is it Mrs Newman now?’ She arched thin brows.

  ‘No, it isn’t—I mean it is.’ Sian took a deep breath at her complete lack of confidence. ‘My name is still Morrissey,’ she said more firmly, noticing that Jarrett didn’t seem at all surprised by this disclosure.

  ‘Then your little sister got the vet after all,’ Arlette derided.

  Sian’s eyes widened. ‘How did you know…?’

  The other woman shrugged. ‘I saw them together one evening, talking very intensely. They made such a nice couple.’

  ‘They’re married now,’ she revealed dully, knowing by the lack of change of expression in Jarrett’s face that he had known that too.

  ‘What a shame—rejected again, Sian,’ Arlette scorned.

  Sian stiffened. ‘I prefer to think of it as realising a mistake before it was too late,’ she snapped. ‘Can you claim the same thing?’

  ‘Unfortunately, no,’ Arlette bit out.

  ‘When the two of you have quite finished,’ Jarrett’s voice was icy. ‘Can we get this over with, Arlette?’

  ‘But of course, honey,’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Gilpatrick?’

  ‘Just now,’ Arlette nodded. ‘What a charming man he is.’

  ‘Fascinating!’ Jarrett derided. ‘He gave you the papers?’

  She nodded. ‘And I signed them. He’s taken them back to his office to make sure I didn’t use invisible ink,’ she taunted.

  ‘I trust you,’ he drawled.

  ‘I don’t think Gilpatrick does,’ Arlette said dryly. ‘I’ve cleared out my desk, Jarrett.’

  ‘What did you take?’ he snorted.

  ‘My manicure set,’ she gave a husky laugh. ‘The amount you paid me to get out I doubt I’ll need to do anything but my nails for the rest of my life!’

  Sian turned away, trying not to listen to what was a very personal conversation. Jarrett had no right to make her stay and listen to this. She looked up to find him watching her with puzzled eyes.

  ‘Frank intended you to have the money and not the power, Arlette,’ he said slowly. ‘He intended you to sell to me for a high profit.’

  ‘I know that,’ she shrugged. ‘But after he died you were still available—you can’t blame me for trying to get you, using my directorship as leverage.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ he drawled. ‘But I was never available.’

  Arlette sighed. ‘Not to me, anyway. I did care for Frank in the beginning, Jarrett. I just—He was such a lot older than me, and—’

  ‘You should never have married him!’ Jarrett’s voice was harsh.

  Arlette shrugged. ‘I’ve always liked money, and your uncle had plenty of it. He also loved me very much.’

  ‘A fact you played upon to the full,’ he snapped.

  ‘We were happy to start with—’

  ‘Until he became ill, then you didn’t want to know!’

  Arlette grimaced. ‘I’ve never liked illness of any kind.’

  ‘Then maybe you’d better leave, because you make me feel ill,’ he rasped cruelly.

  ‘Okay, I’m going,’ she drawled unconcernedly. ‘I doubt we’ll be meeting again, so do I offer you both my congratulations?’

  ‘No,’ Jarrett rasped.

  Arlette shrugged, walking over to the door. ‘I’ll say goodbye, then.’ The door closed behind her, but her heady perfume still filled the room.

  Sian stared at the door in numbed silence. Not only had she misjudged Jarrett about Nina, but about Arlette too. Arlette had been married to Frank King, his uncle!

  She swallowed hard. ‘I—’ her voice came out as a low croak. ‘Oh God!’ she buried her face in her hands. ‘God, Jarrett, how you must hate me!’ She stood blindly to her feet. ‘I’ll go. I should never have come here.’ She walked straight into the hard wall of his chest.

  ‘You aren’t going anywhere.’ Somehow his voice had gentled, his hands warm against her arms.

  She collapsed weakly against his chest. ‘How you must hate me,’ she groaned again.

  ‘I could never bring myself to do that,’ he said gruffly. ‘Tell me, Sian, if you didn’t come here because you finally knew Arlette is my aunt by marriage then why did you come?’

  She steadied her ragged breathing with effort, licking the tears away from her lips as she looked up at him. ‘Because I love you,’ she told him simply. ‘Because I can’t live without you any longer.’

  ‘But if you still believed Arlette was my wife?’ he frowned.

  ‘I was willing to take what I could get,’ she admitted shakily. ‘To wait if you wanted to divorce her, to just live with you if you didn’t. I’m still willing to do that.’

  ‘Are you, indeed?’ Jarrett drawled, putting her away from him and into a chair. ‘We still have a lot of talking to do before I decide what I’m going to do with you. How did you feel when Newman married Bethany?’ he scowled.

  ‘Relieved,’ she answered instantly. ‘But how did you know about it?’

  ‘I knew the engagement was off before I left Swannell,’ he shrugged. ‘And your father told me about the wedding.’

  ‘If you knew I wasn’t engaged—’

  ‘Why did I leave?’ he said harshly. ‘I still had a lot to do here, and nothing to stay there for.’

  ‘The house—’

  ‘Is finished,’ he nodded. ‘Why did you wait until now to come to me, Sian? Did your father finally convince you about Arlette?’ he asked bitterly.

  ‘Dad?’ she frowned her puzzlement. ‘I doubt if he knew she was your aunt either. We all assumed—’

  ‘Too damned much!’ he rasped. ‘But your father did know about Arlette, I told him when I called.’

  ‘I didn’t even know you’d called him until yesterday, after I’d told him I was coming to see you.’

  ‘After?’ he repeated softly.

  ‘Yes. He said you’d explained about Nina, but he didn’t mention Arlette. Oh, please believe me, Jarrett, I didn’t know about her!’ she pleaded with him.

  ‘I could see that as I spoke to her just now—you went quite white. But why tell you about Nina and not Arlette?’ he frowned.

  ‘I think I know why,’ she said quietly. ‘I had to prove to you, as well as myself, that I trust you.’ Her head went back. ‘And I do trust you, Jarrett.’

  He nodded, his mouth twisting wryly. ‘Remind me to thank your father the next time I see him. When you turned up here today I thought he’d explained it all to you, that you’d decided to give me a second chance, that you’d decided to forgive and forget.’ He began to pace the room. ‘Only there was nothing for you to forgive, and plenty for me to forget—namely your lack of trust throughout our relationship!’

  She could see he was becoming angry again, that the softness of a moment ago was fading. ‘Jarrett—’

  ‘All the time I was in Swannell this time proposing marriage to you you thought I had something a little more basic in mind—an affair!’ His eyes glittered down at her. ‘It seemed to me that as soon as you knew the truth about Arlette you came hotfooting it over here expecting me to welcome you with open arms. I’ve had too many kicks in the teeth from you in the past to do that,’ he said grimly.

  ‘But I didn’t know the truth until just now,’ she pleaded. ‘You know I didn’t.’

  ‘When I paid off Arlette?’ his mouth twisted. ‘Even then you thought I was buying her out of a marriage instead of the firm.’ His eyes narrowed as she blushed her guilt. ‘How could you think I would ever marry a woman like Arlette?’ he rasped.
/>   ‘I just—She’s very beautiful,’ Sian said lamely.

  ‘If you like snakes,’ he dismissed harshly. ‘By the time I got over here three years ago she’d curled herself about my uncle so well it was impossible to stop him marrying her, to get him to believe her affairs, to stop him leaving her the directorship in King Construction.’

  ‘She was the reason things weren’t straightforward for you? I remember you said that once.’ Sian blushed at his hard look.

  ‘I said a lot of other things you should have remembered, more important things,’ he ground out. ‘But you were too busy distrusting me to believe anything I had to say. Tell me, Sian, if I let you live with me what happens the next time I so much as look at a pretty woman twice?’ His eyes were narrowed green slits.

  She moistened her lips, refusing to think of the fact that he had said ‘live with’ him and not ‘marry’ him. She had come here to accept any terms he would give her, and that was what she would do. ‘You want the truth?’ Her head went back challengingly.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ he nodded.

  She shrugged. ‘Then I’ll probably scratch her eyes out,’ she admitted simply.

  Jarrett gave a shout of laughter and came over to pull her into his arms. ‘I won’t even look once,’ he promised raggedly into her hair. ‘Not when I have my fierce little tigress to come home to!’

  Her arms were tight about his waist beneath his jacket, her face buried in his chest. ‘You’ll let me live with you?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘Yes,’ he chuckled softly, his anger completely gone now.

  ‘Even if I am jealous and possessive?’ she pointed out anxiously.

  ‘Yes. Because I’m just as jealous and possessive,’ Jarrett smiled down at her, his eyes darkening as he threaded his hands into her hair to hold her head immobile beneath him. ‘God, I love you, Sian,’ he groaned before his mouth captured hers.

  She kissed him as if she never wanted to stop—and she didn’t! She wanted him to make love to her right now, this instant.

  ‘We can’t, Sian,’ he moaned against her throat as he sensed her need. ‘Not here. Will you come home with me?’