Man Trouble!

by Fox, Natalie

  ‘Mel!’ Jade cried, her heart thudding which shock at the mention of her father. ‘Mel, what on earth…?’ Real fear spiralled through her now. Oh, God, what had happened?

  Mel let Nicholas go and turned to her then. That cold hostility didn’t soften for her and her heart was twisting in agony now, the fear getting a deeper hold, paling her skin, thinning her blood till she felt faint. Mel spoke quietly, almost formally, without warmth or tenderness. ‘I would have told you when I thought the time was right. Now isn’t exactly the time but I don’t want it coming from him.’ He nodded towards a white-faced Nicholas who looked as if he wished he could go out and come back in again.

  ‘I did a deal with your father last week,’ he told Jade levelly. ‘He’s coming back to the UK next week to tell you himself. He sold me Ritchie’s—’

  Jade’s hands shot to her mouth in shock and her eyes widened painfully. Oh, no this couldn’t be true. This couldn’t have happened without her knowledge. It just couldn’t.

  ‘And the rest, you bastard,’ Nicholas suddenly grated, brave all of a sudden.

  There was more? What more could there be? Mel owned the company—the company her father had trusted her to run for the past four years. She had always thought it would all come to her eventually…and now it was Mel’s and…

  ‘Jade,’ Mel murmured, his tone warning her that ‘the rest’ Nicholas had mentioned was something she wasn’t going to enjoy hearing. ‘I’m giving the company to…to Nadia.’

  The words, the name, the meaning slammed into her as if Nicholas’s fist had landed in the pit of her stomach instead of punching at thin air. But Mel had delivered the verbal blow and the breath went from her. Winded, she tried to gasp out, No, no, but nothing came to her whitened lips. Her head spun dizzily and she clenched her fists to try and keep herself from collapsing, and then realisation seeped through the fog in her mind.

  She stared in horror at Mel. Mel who had come to her tonight, begging forgiveness, putting right all that he’d allowed to go wrong. Loving her, making love to her…knowing all this. He had planned and plotted all this way back, from the very start. It wasn’t Jade and Mel, it was Nadia and Mel. It always had been.

  His words of love had meant nothing; his lovemaking had been a charade to fool her into a false sense of security so that subsequently, when she was at her most defenceless, he could snatch it all away from her, punish her, destroy her. Suddenly she knew so much, realised so much. Pain? The pain of the past had been nothing to what she felt now. It was as if he had torn her very heart out and discarded it, shredded and useless.

  A deep, numbing chill clawed her from head to toe. Mel had won. Four years ago her supposed betrayal had damaged him so badly it had turned him into the monster of revenge he was now. And he was a monster—a terrible, evil man—and it helped to know it now. He had destroyed her love, stamped it underfoot as if it had no worth.

  The iron bars of protection came up around her heart; she willed them up, and bolted them firmly against him. Jade breathed deeply and drew herself up. Stiffly she walked away from the two of them, cold, oh, so cold, thinking that even if they killed each other she couldn’t care less.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘MEL rang to say he’ll be a bit late,’ Diane told her the next morning as she crossed the outer office and went into her own. ‘Are you OK, Jade?’ she asked worriedly.

  ‘Fine,’ Jade told her from the door, forcing a thin smile. She wasn’t, of course. She still felt horribly disorientated after her shocking discovery but she had to keep going, for the staff’s sake, if nothing else.

  ‘Mel didn’t sound fine; he sounded—’

  Like a bastard, Jade didn’t add, closing her door after her. She sat down at her desk and gazed around her, her face pinched with lack of sleep. This wasn’t hers any more, not even her father’s. She had nothing—no career, no life. Tears stung her eyes but she wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of a good old weep. She’d survive because she’d survived four years without him and she was getting the hang of it. Mel had taught her one thing, though—that when you were down the only way out was up—but where she was going to ascend to was anyone’s guess.

  ‘Can you spare a minute, Jade?’ a voice came from the door.

  Jade looked up from the desk drawer she was numbly clearing, surprised to see Nadia hovering in the doorway. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if Nadia had come to thank her for the company Mel had bought for her. That would be the final agony, the one that would send her over the edge.

  ‘I just came to thank you…’ she began as she crossed the room to Jade, and Jade’s heart slumped to an alltime low. Somehow she braced herself in defence. ‘Your input into the Osbourne presentation was invaluable, Jade. I can see now that I’d gone way over the top. Even Mel hadn’t seen it. I didn’t tell him about the alterations you suggested and went ahead and sent a courier over last night with the artwork. They accepted it first thing this morning, jubilantly, and they wouldn’t have done if I’d stuck to my guns and not listened to you.’ Her eyes twinkled suddenly. ‘I think we make a good team, don’t you?’

  Jade stared at her bleakly, wondering if Nadia was quite as innocent as she seemed. But perhaps she didn’t know that she now owned Ritchie’s. Maybe it was going to be a little engagement surprise from Mel!

  Oh, the pain and the anguish of it all. She forced words to her thinned lips. ‘I’m glad it worked out,’ was all she could form in a faint whisper.

  Nadia grinned happily and leaned across Jade’s desk, an elongated string of jet beads swinging from her lovely pale throat. She stilled them with her long, artistic fingers. ‘Who’s going to tell him, you or me?’ she teased lightly.

  She has his measure, Jade thought with a dull thud of her heart. She knows him so well. Yet looking at her, arty and bohemian, Jade felt she wasn’t his type. But then they said that opposites attracted. What did Jade know anyway? Apparently nothing where Mel Biaggio was concerned.

  She shook her head because there was no answer to Nadia’s query. She wouldn’t be here anyway, to tell anyone anything. She was out of it all and any minute now she was going to get up and walk out and leave the two of them to it.

  Nadia plopped herself down in the chair on the other side of Jade’s desk and suddenly she wasn’t teasing and twinkling any more. Her lovely face had taken on a new seriousness.

  ‘Jade, I also want to thank you for giving me this chance. I don’t know how much Mel has told you, but, knowing him, not a lot. I adore him, Jade. He gives so much of himself…’

  Oh, dear God, please stop, Jade wanted to plead. I don’t want to hear. Not girl talk, not now. It’s unendurable. But there was no stopping Nadia.

  ‘I’ve been to hell and back and for the first time I’m feeling as if I’ve got a grasp on life again, thanks to you—and Mel, of course.’ She sighed softly. ‘It was so hard for me when I found I was pregnant and…Mel was so strong, and then after I lost the baby…’

  Nausea rose up in Jade’s throat, hot and stinging. Nadia pregnant with Mel’s baby? Oh, no, please, no. Enough was enough. She couldn’t take any more.

  ‘Mel’s stood by me and—’

  Jade’s strength came back in a feverish rush. Her head swimming with pain, she forced movement to her legs. Grabbing her handbag with trembling fingers, she flew from the room, ignoring Nadia’s cry of concern for her.

  Mel caught her arm in the outer office and she was so dazed with grief she didn’t know what was happening.

  ‘This isn’t the time to be leaving, Jade,’ he said gently. ‘We have things to talk about.’

  Jade’s head reeled; her first coherent thought was that he hadn’t shouted at her and ordered her back into her office. Gradually her head cleared, her eyes focused, and her whole body stiffened. He stood towering over her, grasping her arm with one hand, holding a huge bunch of deep red roses in the other. Nadia stood bemused in the doorway, Diane sat bemused at her desk, and all the phones seemed to be ringing at t
he same time. Jade saw a red mist before her eyes, a billowing mist of fierce rage.

  ‘You rat!’ she breathed in fury. ‘How dare you humiliate me this way? How dare you?’ How could he be so cruel? What was buried in the heart of those roses for Nadia—her company deeds, bound with red ribbon to match the blooms? She couldn’t bear it; it was way over the top, too much to face. ‘I hate you for this! I hate myself for allowing it to happen!’ she screamed at him. ‘I never want to see you again, ever!’ And she fled, with Mel’s voice calling her name ringing in her ears.

  The air outside, fresh wintry air blustering in from the west, cooled her temples but did nothing to cool the heat inside her. She burned with it. Mel and Nadia had created a child and it hurt so terribly to think about it…and…and they had lost it. Poor Nadia. Mel had stood by her and so he damn well should have, but what he shouldn’t have done was seduce her, Jade, back into his life when he’d had a commitment to Nadia all along. Oh, how he had fooled her, and fooled poor Nadia too, because she couldn’t know what Mel was really like.

  Nicholas was brewing coffee when Jade, frazzled and still hot with fury, got back to the apartment later. She hadn’t seen him since the skirmish last night with Mel. She’d flown to her bedroom and slammed the door shut after casting Mel’s suit jacket out into the hallway so that she wouldn’t have to see him again. And she didn’t want to see Nicholas now either. She wanted her own space, time to get her head together over this wicked, cruel betrayal. But seeing as he was here…

  ‘Did you know through my father, Nicholas?’ she shrieked at him. ‘Have you spoken to him? What did he say?’

  Nicholas held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘Hold on, Jade. Cool down.’

  ‘I’ll never be cool again!’ she stormed at him, flinging her bag down on a stool. ‘Tell me how you knew.’

  Nicholas calmly poured her a coffee and pushed it over the work surface to her. ‘He called me at the office yesterday—lucky to find me there actually. As you know, we talk once a month or so.’

  Jade kneaded her aching brow. Of course, Nicholas looked after her father’s shares portfolio.

  ‘We went through the usual and then he told me about the sale of Ritchie’s and where the money was to go. Most of it’s to go to you in investments for your future. He said it was time you were married and giving him grandchildren—’

  ‘Planning to marry me off to you again, no doubt,’ she flamed. How could her father do this to her? She was mad at him, but her fury with Mel took precedence. It boiled like an inferno inside her.

  ‘Look, I don’t pretend to know what is going on here’ Nicholas went on wearily. ‘You’ll tell me in your own good time but for the moment I’ve got a blinding headache and can well do without you screaming at me.’ He swallowed a couple of aspirins with his coffee and it gave Jade time to reason with herself that this wasn’t Nicholas’s fault.

  She clenched her fists. ‘Go on,’ she urged, calmer now but only marginally so.

  ‘Then he went on to tell me who was taking over. Said this Mel Biaggio had got in touch with him with an offer he couldn’t refuse. You could have knocked me down with the back page of the Financial Times’ Nicholas gulped more coffee and went on, ‘He went on to say what a great guy Biaggio was and how he wouldn’t mind him for a son-in-law. God, the bastard even fooled your father. John would have a fit if he knew Nadia was in fact Biaggio’s fiancĂe. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a law against this. I’d call what he did malpractice-worming his fiancĂe into your company and then snaffling it for her.’

  ‘Unethical, yes,’ Jade agreed tightly, reaching for her coffee and wondering if a couple of aspirins or six would lull her into a sleep she didn’t want to wake from. ‘So my father knew Mel was giving the company to Nadia?’

  ‘Biaggio told him he wanted the shares in her name; said it was to be a gift to her—he omitted to tell him his marriage plans, though.’ Nicholas snorted in disgust. ‘John was thrilled the company was going to someone so respected in the business. He’d heard of her. Apparently she’s very talented, innovative and—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Jade cried. The lovely Nadia was a won-derwoman and she didn’t need the fact rammed down her throat again and again.

  ‘I could kick myself for letting this happen, Jade,’ Nicholas moaned, looking at her and noting the paleness of her face, the grim set of her lips.

  ‘It isn’t your fault,’ Jade conceded dully.

  ‘Yes, but I had my suspicions, didn’t I? I should have acted on them.’

  ‘Yes, well, you did leave it a trifle late to try and land one on him,’ she bit back.

  He grinned sheepishly. ‘I would have done, too, if I hadn’t had one over the eight sherbets last night.’

  He wouldn’t have stood a chance, Jade thought. ‘Did he say anything after I left?’ she asked after a minute of morbid reflection.

  Stupid question really; what did it matter and what difference would it make knowing if he had said anything after she had flounced off last night? Safe behind the locked door of her bedroom, she’d heard no further sounds. She had never thought of either of them as violent and Nicholas’s attack had shocked her, but Mel’s cool control had astonished her even more. Hadn’t he always said he’d want to punch the jaw of any man involved with her? Yet he’d restrained himself last night, hadn’t lashed back even when threatened.

  With hindsight, it was easy to reason why. He didn’t care about her any more, hadn’t cared for four years. All that love talk and action had just been a ruse to punish her for denting his pride four years ago, and he’d added a dollop of crushing revenge by taking the company from her as well. If Oscars for towering performances in the revenge category were being dished out, Mel Biaggio would get the prize for best perpetrator, she decided grimly.

  ‘Actually, he said rather a strange thing,’ Nicholas went on, frowning. ‘He went into the hall to pick up his jacket after you’d tossed it out of your bedroom and came back and said, “Now I’ve finally met you I’m wondering why I tortured myself for so long.” That was all. And then he stormed out. Blowed if I can work that one out.’ Nicholas noticed the expression of despair on her face. ‘Jade, sweetheart,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t mean to pry but, well, last night you and him—I mean…it looked…’

  ‘Forget it,’ Jade suddenly blazed. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. It was nothing; it never has been anything.’ She grabbed her handbag and rushed to her bedroom. She couldn’t bear it. She shouldn’t have asked. He’d wondered what he’d tortured himself with over the years! Huh, he didn’t know anything about torture, only how to inflict it on others.

  She packed a few things, quickly and jerkily, trying not to think. She didn’t want to be in town. She needed air and lots of it. ‘I’m going down to Bankton House for the weekend,’ she told Nicholas, noticing he was leaning in her doorway gripping a steadying cup of coffee in both hands. ‘If Daddy’s coming over I’ll need to straighten the house out.’

  Yes, getting the house ready for her father would give her reason to live. In his letter he’d said he had news for her. God, what a romantic fool she had been to think the news was his engagement to Anita. She knew the news now. Mel Biaggio had bought the company for the real love of his life.

  ‘I don’t think you’re in a fit state to drive anywhere at the moment, Jade,’ Nicholas said sagely. ‘I’ve never seen you so wound up. Why don’t we all go down together in the morning? Trisha and I are at a loose end this weekend and—’

  ‘I’m going now!’ Jade slammed at him, and grabbed her overnight bag.

  Nicholas caught her arm as she went to push past him. ‘Jade, go if you must, but we’ll come down Sunday. I think you need to talk and we’ve known each other long enough for you to open up to me.’

  A protest hovered on Jade’s lips, but not for long. She saw the concern in Nicholas’s eyes. At least someone cared about her. Being alone this weekend would mean having no control over her thinking. At least if she wa
s occupied with Nicholas and Trisha, cooking and clearing up after the pair of them, thinking wouldn’t be forced on her.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she muttered, and then bit her lip as tears welled in her eyes. She added humbly, ‘Thanks, Nicholas. I think you must be the only friend I have in the world.’

  The phone started to ring and Jade was glad of the diversion. As Nicholas turned away to answer it, she took

  the chance to slip away before she broke down altogether.

  * * *

  Jade slammed on the brakes hard. She’d been so deep in miserable thoughts, she was almost on top of the crash before it registered. Ahead a lorry had jackknifed across three lanes of the motorway. Several cars had slammed into it. There was chaos—police lights flashing, a fire crew already hard at work, ambulances and paramedics standing by. One of the cars, its bonnet crumpled under the belly of the articulated lorry, was the same make and colour as her own. Oh, God. It was almost like a sign of what might have happened to her if she hadn’t pulled up in time.

  Jade shivered, her head clearing. There must have been warning signs way back on the motorway but she just hadn’t seen them.

  ‘Keep to the hard shoulder,’ a voice shouted, and someone tapped on her window. Instinctively Jade buzzed the window down to the policeman who was directing the traffic. ‘The slip road ahead is closed for the rescue teams so keep going down the motorway. Now keep moving before you cause another sticky pile-up.’

  Without needing to be told twice Jade cautiously shifted forward, hardly daring to glance at the mass of wreckage to her right. It sobered her thinking. She hadn’t been concentrating and Nicholas was right. She shouldn’t be driving down to Bankton, not so soon after her own personal shock.

  By the time she got home she’d realised just how fragile she was feeling. She was exhausted, mentally and physically. The sun was going down. The house glowed, the stonework mellowed down to an orangey hue. It was one small comfort to her senses. She was home and she’d lock herself away and nothing, but nothing would get to her.