For Revenge or Redemption? (5 page)

‘You’ll have me fired, right?’

He didn’t affirm or deny that statement. His narrowing eyes, though, resembled hard chips of steel, and harsh lines suddenly bracketed his mouth.

‘Like your grandfather was instrumental in doing to me?’

Grace frowned. ‘What are you talking about? You didn’t work for my grandfather.’

‘Directly, no, but he had interests in that boatyard, and enough clout with its owner to see that I was swiftly dispatched for even daring to breathe on his precious granddaughter, let alone lay my rough, rude hands on her supposedly chaste little body.’

His derision at the kind of girl he thought she was stung more than she wanted to admit. He didn’t know she’d been a virgin. It had all been so easy; how could he have known?

‘I—I didn’t know.’ She was shaking her head now in horrified rejection at Lance Culverwell ever stooping to do what Seth was accusing him of—and because of her. ‘Really, I
didn’t.’ But it would explain Seth’s driving motive all these years, she realised—to get even with her family.

‘Is that contrition I see in your eyes, Grace? Surely not! It really doesn’t become you.’

‘Why? Because you think I’m not capable of any feeling?’ Surprisingly, the notion that he could even consider that cut deep—but it was just her pride that hurt, she convinced herself. Nothing else. ‘Anyway…’ Her reluctant gaze swept over the thick, black hair, which even an expensive cut hadn’t altogether tamed, over the designer suit and exclusive black shoes. Ignoring the sudden quickening of her heart-rate that just looking at him produced, she said waspishly, ‘It doesn’t seem to have hurt you any.’

‘Not so much as my mother who was already struggling to make ends meet. But, hey! What’s a man’s job when you live in a nice, comfortable mansion with more food than you could ever eat and servants to fetch and carry for you at the snap of your fingers?’ His hostility and resentment burned in him like an eternal flame. ‘And you complain that I think you aren’t capable of any feelings? I’m quite sure that you and your kind don’t have any regrets about trampling on others to get what you want, particularly those worse off than yourself.’

She flinched from his continual need to verbally flay her.

‘You don’t know
my kind
, Seth Mason. You haven’t the first idea what sort of woman I am.’

‘Haven’t I?’ he grated. ‘Then all the more reason why I should keep you around to discover this new Grace Tyler for myself—and I think it’s going to be a very enlightening journey.’

‘Get lost!’

‘As much as you’d like that, Grace, I’m afraid that this time that isn’t going to happen. I’m calling the shots now. Take it or leave it, but I don’t think you’ll walk away with your tail between your legs like a disciplined little lap-dog because
you’re way too proud and you’ve got far too much to lose. No. You’ll take it, and, before I’ve finished with you, lying down!’

His innuendo was obvious. But he had her just where he wanted her, she realised, because as he had already made clear he knew she’d stick it out. It was the only way she would have any say in, or be able to hang on to, even a part of all that her grandfather had spent his life working for, she thought. She despaired at how the woman he had been so besotted by could have thrown her on the mercy of a man like Seth Mason. Nevertheless, that pride that he had spoken off a moment ago had her flinging back recklessly, ‘You reckon?’

‘Don’t present me with a challenge, Grace. I think it only fair to tell you that I thrive on them.’ Which was obvious, she thought, shuddering from the determination in him, otherwise he wouldn’t have got to where he was today.

‘That’s big of you,’ she retorted, knowing she was playing with fire but unable to let him have the last word. ‘Well, let me tell you, I haven’t worked my butt off getting where I have in this firm to be walked over by an arrogant, overbearing, jumped-up boatyard worker from the back of beyond! I’ll work alongside you for the sake of the company, but let’s get one thing clear—you might have pulled yourself up out of the next best thing to the gutter…’ Angrily, she snatched up her jacket and bag. ‘But you’ll never,
ever
, get me into bed with you again!’

The walls seemed to shake as she slammed the boardroom door behind her.

‘Wow! What, already? He’s a fast worker!’ That dry comment from Simone, who was just coming along the corridor, fell onto the deafening silence that followed.

‘That isn’t funny, Simone.’ Hot and shaking from her outburst, Grace felt uncomfortably sticky beneath her travel-creased clothes.

‘No, I can’t say amusement was the overriding emotion coming out of that boardroom. Care to tell me where you know him from?’

‘No.’

Her PA pulled a knowing face. ‘That memorable, was it?’

‘I’m sorry, Simone,’ Grace apologised, not meaning to have spoken so sharply to her assistant. ‘I guess I’m suffering from a chronic case of jet lag.’ She shook her head to try and clear it. ‘Among other things,’ she exhaled, her eyes swivelling towards the room she had just so dramatically vacated. She couldn’t believe that this wasn’t some farcical nightmare that she would wake up from any minute. An inner anguish pleated her forehead as she tagged on, ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Not long enough for him to bring out a side of your nature I’ve never seen—or heard.’ This with a roll of her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘Are you all right? Can I get you something?’

‘Yes. Enough Culverwell shares to give me a majority holding.’
So that I won’t lose all that was precious to my grandfather—to me—to a man hell-bent on revenge!

Simone grimaced sympathetically. ‘No can do, girl. I think all we can do is co-operate with him and the new management and pray that we’ve still got jobs this time next week.’

‘How can I co-operate—?’ The boardroom door suddenly opening left Grace’s words hanging in mid-sentence.

Seth Mason emerged, appearing more dynamic and commanding in the narrower confines of the corridor, if that were possible. He sent Grace a stripping glance. She had been way too rude in there, and something told her he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

‘Simone, I’d like you to bring your note pad in here. But first will you have a word with whoever it is you need to see about having self-closing hinges fitted on all principal doors?’

‘Certainly, Mr Mason,’ Simone responded with what seemed to Grace like annoying deference to the new CEO, before she caught the covert glance her assistant sent her. It conveyed the message already obvious from Seth’s instructions;
he isn’t going to take anyone slamming doors in his face!

‘I see,’ she said, rounding on him as the other woman tripped off towards the lift. ‘So she’s your PA now, is she?’

‘No,’ he surprised her by answering, ‘But I thought you wouldn’t mind my making use of her until my own arrives.’

‘It so happens, I do mind. And no one
makes use
of anyone in this company,’ she enlightened him, piqued by the dismissive manner in which he had just spoken about a member of her team. ‘I just thought I ought to warn you, otherwise you might wonder why you’ve got a full-blown mutiny on your hands.’

‘Thanks for the warning.’ He smiled indolently, making her body react to him in a way that made her brain chastise her for her stupidity. ‘It was just a figure of speech. Why don’t you go home, Grace?’ Strangely, his tone had softened, become dangerously caressing in its sensuality. She had a feeling that it was some sort of mind game he was playing with her. ‘Grab a couple of hours’ sleep? Freshen up a bit?’ His gaze raked with disconcerting thoroughness over her dishevelled appearance. ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m sure you’ll agree that no one can give their best if they aren’t functioning on all cylinders.’

Was that concern in his eyes? she wondered, then dismissed the notion, deciding that it was probably pity. The type one would have for an animal one has just snared as one mulled over the most humane way to make the kill.

‘Perhaps you’d prefer it if I didn’t come back at all!’ Her fighting spirit rose to her defence, challenging him.

‘On the contrary,’ he said, and this time his mouth curved in a fragment of a smile that did nothing to warm his eyes,
just merely showed her how calm he was in contrast. ‘As I’ve already explained, I’m going to spend every satisfying minute working with you.’

Don’t imagine it will be a bed of roses!
It took every gram of will power Grace had to bite the words back. This was her family’s business, in name if nothing else, and she’d be darned if she would let Seth Mason goad her into throwing in her share and just walking away, as Corinne had done, or give him any reason to get rid of her which—unbelievable and humiliating though it was—he now had the power to do.

‘You’re right,’ she accepted, deciding to ignore his last remark that made her blood pump heavily through her with its scarcely concealed implication. Her head was pounding too and she was longing for a shower. ‘I think I will freshen up.’

But she didn’t summon a taxi to take her home.

No way, she decided, was she going to take the advice of this conceited, over-confident, muscle-bound boat builder—or whatever he had been—and abandon her staff just when they needed someone to reassure them that all their hard work and their loyalty wasn’t just going to be written off.

Instead, swinging away from him, she took the lift down to her own office. This time when she rang the Culverwell home, Corinne answered.

‘How could you?’ Grace breathed as the much-too-affected voice of her grandfather’s widow started trying to placate her with some hollow, meaningless explanation. ‘How could you? And without breathing a word of it to me?’

‘Because I knew you’d react like this.’ Corinne sounded irritated. Grace could almost see her sitting at her marbletopped dressing table in her transparent negligee, her short red hair gelled to look as though she’d just tumbled out of bed, a cooling mask on her face as she applied precise sweeping strokes of lacquer to her perfect nails. ‘Be sensible, Grace.
I wanted to sell my shares—so did Paul—and you couldn’t afford to buy them.’

‘Paul?’ The fact that her ex could have been complicit in trying to oust her from the board of the family company made her wonder if there was something going on between him and Corinne. ‘Did you cook this up between you?’

‘No, we didn’t. I haven’t seen Paul Harringdale since you broke up with him. He’s not my type.’

No. Your type is more besotted elderly men who’ll give you anything just to hear you flatter their diminishing egos!
Grace thought bitterly.

‘When you’ve calmed down a bit, Grace, you’ll realise that I’ve done Culverwells a favour. The company needs a man like Seth Mason. When he approached me to see if I’d sell, what could I do? He can be pretty persuasive. Wow! I don’t know what you’re complaining about. I can’t imagine it being that much of a punishment, taking orders from a man like that.’

Grace bit back the desire to tell her grandfather’s widow that she could go ahead and take orders from him if she wanted to, because
she
wasn’t going to. But then she would have to hand in her resignation and she had already promised herself that she wouldn’t do that.

‘Goodbye, Corinne.’

Ringing off, she stepped through into the adjacent showerroom and, stripping off her clothes, stepped under the refreshing spray of the jets, wishing she could cut off her thoughts as easily as she had cut the line to her grandfather’s widow.

But the memories wouldn’t leave her alone, and unwillingly she found herself reflecting on the emotional chaos of eight years ago: the shock of her pregnancy. Her shame and regret over the way she had behaved. The unbelievable anguish following a miscarriage at four-and-a-half months.

It was then that she’d realised that life wasn’t just one big party; that there were debts to be paid and rules to be
respected, and that some things in life had a far, far greater value than status or money.

But she didn’t want to think about any of that. It was all because of seeing Seth again that the past had opened its floodgates, making her dwell on things that she wanted, needed, to forget: regret. Loneliness. Self-blame. The pain of her loss.

She didn’t have to think about it, and she wouldn’t, she told herself fiercely. She had enough worries with the company right now and the shock of Seth Mason taking over.

Towelling herself off, she went through into the dressingroom adjacent to her office and, sliding back the doors on the mirror-fronted cupboards, she scanned the shelves for fresh underwear. She always kept a change of clothes in the office in case of an unexpected out-of-hours meeting or dinner when she couldn’t get home to change.

Now she pulled a silver-grey silk blouse and dark businesssuit down off their hangers, donned clean underwear and drew a short pencil-line skirt up over her hips.

She couldn’t, wouldn’t, let him get to her, she determined as she slipped on her blouse and came through into her office to jot down a reminder to herself of a dental appointment that had almost slipped her mind. She couldn’t help wondering what he would say if he ever found out that there had been repercussions from their love-making all those years ago. What he would think—that it had been her comeuppance for the appalling way in which she had behaved?

Fumbling with the top fastening of her blouse, she shuddered from the thought of how he might gloat. She was glad that he didn’t know and would never know all that she had been through. Then she looked up, startled, her eyes dark and enormous, to see him striding into her office.

‘Don’t you ever knock?’ she challenged, flustered, still trying to fasten her blouse which was gaping open, revealing too much of her creamy breasts in their black lacy cups.

‘The door was open.’ He looked as shocked and surprised
as she was to see him, while his eyes skimmed with barely veiled masculine interest over her state of undress. ‘Anyway, I thought you’d gone home.’

‘Because you ordered me to?’ She couldn’t seem to give him any leeway, even if she wanted to.

‘Advised,’ he corrected. ‘Not ordered.’

‘And leave my customers and all the people who depended on my grandfather and now me in the hands of…of…’