The Marriage Deal

Ashley gasped, her eyes flashing green fire at him, as she tried unavailingly to pull away. Her lips parted in a protest which was fated never to be uttered as Jago’s mouth came down on hers, warm, firm, and shamelessly sensual.

Her senses reeled under the suddenness of the onslaught. Her body seemed to be melting, her legs no longer able to support her properly, the blood in her veins moving slowly, thick and sweet as honey, as she fought for control.

The kiss seemed endless and she had to curb the instinct to yield, to respond, to explore his mouth as avidly as he was seeking the secrets of hers. It was a temptation that had to be resisted at all costs, and she knew it, even though her body was overwhelmed, trembling with the surge of unsatisfied longing within her.

But she had to remember that he cared no more for her now than he had three years ago, a small desperate voice in her head warned her. He was trying to score points, that was all. To let the eyes watching them know that the breach between them, once a nine-day wonder, was either healed or no longer important.

When at last he took his mouth from hers, it was with open reluctance. The music had stopped, and only a smattering of applause from the other dancers filled the amazed and questioning silence around them.

Still dazed, Ashley let Jago lead her back to the table, aware of the barrage of fascinated and curious looks and murmured remarks following them. She was aware too that the couple awaiting them at their table didn’t share that general fascination and curiosity. Martin looked bemused and sullen, and Erica was plainly furious, although she was smiling graciously enough.

Muttering an excuse, Ashley grabbed her bag, and made her way to the refuge of the powder room. Luckily it was deserted, and she sank down on one of the padded stools in front of the mirror and stared at herself. Her eyes looked twice their normal size, and she hadn’t a scrap of colour left. She touched the bare, swollen outline of her mouth with fingers that shook slightly.

Jago had made no concessions at all, either to the passage of time which had separated them, or to the fact they were in a public place. His behaviour, by any standard, was unforgivable. She opened her bag, fumbling a little as she retrieved her compact and lipstick and tried to repair some of the damage he had wrought, while shame and anger built up inside her.

How dare he behave like that! she raged inwardly. His arrogance was appalling. But so, honesty reminded her, had been her own reaction.

She couldn’t go back in the dining room, she thought restlessly, to face the stares and speculation, and Jago’s silent triumph. She would have to get a message to Martin, telling him she had a headache and wanted to go home.

But when she emerged, she found Martin waiting for her.

She pinned on a smile. ‘Ready to go?’

‘More than ready.’ His voice was pettish, and she smothered a sigh. His hand gripped her elbow almost painfully as they walked to the car park, but he said nothing more until they were in the car, and on their way.

Then, ‘What was that all about?’ he wanted to know restively.

‘Do we have to discuss it now?’ Ashley stared in front of her.

‘I’d say so. I don’t appreciate being made to look a fool in public.’

‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t think that was the main intention.’ Ashley bit her lip. ‘Jago was trying to—prove a point, and he chose a rather drastic way of doing it, that’s all.’

‘Old acquaintances, he said.’ Martin’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘It seemed more than that to me.’

His tone demanded an explanation. Ashley hesitated for a moment, then said reluctantly, ‘As it happens, Jago Marrick was the man I was engaged to a couple of years ago.’

‘Good God!’ Martin, always the most careful of drivers, actually took her eyes off the road to gaze at her while he assimilated the information. ‘I hadn’t the slightest idea …’

Ashley sighed. ‘I thought someone would probably have mentioned it.’

‘I suppose everyone assumed you would have told me yourself.’ Martin sounded injured. ‘Didn’t you think I’d want to know you’d been—involved with one of our top clients?’

Ashley looked down at her interlaced fingers. ‘Frankly it was a period of my life I preferred to put out of my mind altogether. Jago was in America, and Giles Marrick could have lived for another thirty years, as far as I knew.’ She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘But what does it matter, anyway? It’s over, and has been for a long time.’

After a long pause, Martin said carefully, ‘A casual observer tonight might query that.’

Ashley forced a smile. ‘I think tonight was a cross between Jago’s idea of a joke, and his wish to tell the world there’s no longer any bad feeling between us.’

‘And is that the case?’

She bent her head in affirmation, trying to push out of her mind the memory of that cynically passionate kiss, and her unsought reaction to it.

He said judiciously, ‘Well, it’s never easy to get over these things, as I know to my cost. Were you very much in love with him, darling?’

‘I’m not sure I even knew what love was,’ Ashley said tonelessly.

He seemed content with that, and to her relief, didn’t insist on accompanying her into the flat as she had half-feared. He accepted her excuse that she was still dog-tired after her flight, and went off, promising tenderly to phone her the next day.

Ashley fell into bed like an automaton, but still she couldn’t sleep. She lay for what seemed like hours, staring into the darkness. Didn’t she have enough problems? Jago’s re-entry into her life was a complication she didn’t need.

Or perhaps the trouble she felt brewing through him was simply a figment of her overcharged imagination. He had his own life and responsibilities now, with Erica not the least of them, judging by tonight’s showing. He wouldn’t have time, let alone the inclination to bait his ex-fiancée.

Surely their lives could run on parallel lines, never crossing the path of each other. And on this comforting reflection, she finally dozed off.

She was woken the next morning by the prolonged ringing of her doorbell. Groggily, she pushed back the covers and grabbed for her robe, trying through the clouds of sleep to remember if the milkman needed paying.

As she opened the door, she stiffened, her whole body taut with outrage as she recognised her visitor.

‘You again!’ she exclaimed furiously, and tried to slam the door in his face, but Jago was too quick for her. His arm clamped round her waist, lifting her totally off her feet as he stepped into the narrow hall. As he set her down again, the door was already closed behind him.

Ashley gritted between her teeth, ‘There’s really no end to your presumption! May I know how you discovered my address—or have I the same little bird to thank?’

Jago tutted. ‘You sound very crotchety, my sweet. I don’t think late nights agree with you. Are you alone, or should I lurk discreetly in the sitting room while Witham makes his escape?’

‘If there’s any vanishing to be done, you’ll do it,’ she said tersely. ‘Get out!’

‘When I’ve said what I came to say.’ The hazel eyes looked her over mockingly. ‘Or did you think last night was all there was to it?’

‘It seemed more than enough for me,’ Ashley snapped. She caught sight of the long case clock in the corner. ‘My God,’ she said falteringly, ‘it isn’t even eight o’clock yet! What the hell …’

Jago produced a carrier bag, ‘I thought we’d have a working breakfast,’ he said briskly.

‘You thought what?’ Words failed her.

‘A working breakfast,’ he repeated kindly. ‘They have a lot of them in the States. I’m supplying the food.’

‘Well, don’t expect me to cook it. I never eat breakfast anyway.’

‘Then you should.’ He gave her another more searching look, and her hands moved instinctively to tighten the already secure sash of her robe. ‘It occurred to me last night, you can’t afford to lose any more weight. Will you show me where the kitchen is, or shall I find it by trial and error?’

‘You’ll get out of here now!’ Ashley raged. ‘And take your lousy food with you!’

‘Your ways of expressing yourself don’t seem to have improved over the years,’ Jago said coolly. ‘The food is fresh—grapefruit, eggs and bacon, and bread for toast. You don’t have to lift a finger. Just eat—and listen to what I have to say.’

‘There’s nothing you have to talk about that I want to hear.’ Eyes sparkling ominously, she faced him, her head held proudly high.

‘Not even when the subject under discussion is Landons—and its questionable future?’ he asked.

‘There is no question about Landons’ future,’ Ashley denied sharply.

‘Now there we differ,’ he said quite gently. ‘I’d say that without some pretty fancy footwork on your part, Marshalls are going to snap you up, and cheap at the price. Is that what you want?’

‘Of course not,’ she said impatiently. ‘But it’s no concern of yours.’

‘It’s my concern.’ There was no amusement in his face. The hazel eyes were cold and inimical as they rested on her. ‘Silas was my good friend, remember?’

‘I’m hardly likely to forget. I’ve often thought it a pity you couldn’t marry him yourself.’

‘And I’ve often thought it a pity you weren’t smacked, as a child, until you couldn’t sit down for a week,’ Jago said bitingly. ‘Now go and get dressed, unless you want to spend the morning in that travesty of a dressing gown. I’ll call you when the food’s ready.’

She said shakily, ‘If I were a man, I’d throw you out.’

‘Don’t be silly, Ash.’ He tapped her hot cheek lightly with his forefinger. ‘If you were a man, I wouldn’t be here, period.’

She wanted to tell him not to call her ‘Ash’, but it suddenly seemed infinitely safer to go to her room, and put some clothes on as he’d suggested.

She dragged on jeans, not new, and a sweater which had seen better days, dragging a comb ruthlessly through her black hair. Cosmetics she left severely alone. Jago was not to think she had taken any trouble with her appearance on his account, she told herself vehemently.

The kitchen was full of the scent and crackle of frying bacon and percolating coffee, and in spite of her anger, Ashley’s nose twitched in appreciation as she entered. Jago was standing by the hob, slicing tomatoes. He too was wearing jeans, she noticed, the close-fitting denim accentuating the length of his legs and the leanness of his hips. The cuffs of his shirt were unbuttoned and turned casually back revealing tanned forearms. He made her trim kitchen seem cramped, Ashley thought resentfully as she unwillingly took a seat at the small breakfast bar.

‘Here.’ He poured coffee into a mug and pushed it across the worktop to her.

‘Thank you,’ she acknowledged stiffly.

‘And three bags full to you.’ He gave her a long look. ‘Unless you relax your attitude, lady, and fast, we’re going to get nowhere.’

‘Well, that suits me down to the ground,’ said Ashley coldly. ‘As I haven’t the slightest wish to make any kind of progress with you.’

‘So, hurt pride and resentment still rule, O.K. You aren’t prepared to swallow either or both for the sake of Landons?’

‘I’d give whatever I had to in order to save the company,’ Ashley retorted. ‘I’ve already given the last couple of years of my life. Apparently for some of the board, this isn’t enough. I don’t know what more they want—blood, presumably.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I think they want the assurance that Landons will continue to be the dynamic, thrusting concern that Silas made it.’

‘You seem very well informed,’ said Ashley coldly, gritting her teeth, as she complied with his signal to start on her grapefruit. ‘Perhaps you’re also aware that Landons had a record profit last year.’

‘That’s true,’ he admitted. ‘But accrued from the projects that Silas set up. You’ve kept the company ticking over, and you’ve delivered the goods, as no one could wish to deny. But your forward planning is lousy. There’ve been a number of tenders you should have gone for—and got—but haven’t. Silas went out and sold Landons in the market place. He was the arch-instigator of all time. Those new civic buildings in town were a case in point. The council never thought on that scale until Silas sold them the idea. Now no one can imagine how they ever did without them. And you can repeat that story over and over again up and down the length of the country.’

‘We have plenty of work,’ Ashley protested indignantly.

‘For the time being—but how much of it is new? How many of your present contracts have you fought for and won?’ He shook his head. ‘This is what concerns the majority of the board, Ashley, and in their place, I’d probably share that concern.’

Ashley bit her lip, looking with disfavour at the plate he was setting in front of her. ‘I can’t possibly eat all that,’ she protested.

‘You’ll eat it if I have to hold your nose and force-feed you,’ Jago told her forthrightly. ‘You’re going to need all your strength, lady, and besides, we have other more important issues to argue about than food.’ He took his place beside her and began to eat with relish as she registered with annoyance. His presence in her flat, his intrusion into her life was an outrage, but he seemed unconscious of the fact.

‘So why are you interfering?’ she asked sulkily, cutting into her bacon, and noting crossly that it was done to a crisp, just as she liked it. ‘I suppose you’ve come here to give me some good advice. Well, let me tell you, I don’t need …’

‘Mere advice won’t get you out of the hole you’re in.’ He reached for a piece of toast. ‘I think the situation calls for rather more drastic action.’

‘And you, of course, know exactly how to cope with the crisis,’ she said derisively.

‘I could get rid of Marshalls for starters.’ Jago bit into his toast.

‘How?’ His confidence needled her.

He sighed. ‘By persuading the board to reject their offer.’

Ashley put down her knife and fork. ‘But why should they do any such thing, particularly on your say-so?’ she demanded heatedly. ‘My God, you’re not even a member of the Landons board!’

‘But I could be.’ The hazel eyes looked coolly and directly into hers. ‘In fact I could be chairman—if you and I were married.’

CHAPTER THREE

IN a voice she hardly recognised as her own, Ashley gasped ‘That—has to be the most insane idea I’ve ever heard!’

‘On the contrary, it makes a lot of sense.’ He even had the gall to go on eating, she realised dazedly. ‘Think about it, and try using your head, instead of your hormones. It was what Silas always intended, after all.’

‘I’m only too well aware of that,’ she said rigidly. ‘It was a very nice, businesslike arrangement for you both, until you allowed your other—proclivities to get in the way.’

‘Ah,’ Jago said softly, ‘I thought we wouldn’t get far before that thorny subject was dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day. You never gave me a chance to explain at the time. Perhaps now you might allow me a few words.’

‘The fewer the better.’ Suddenly she was hurting again, every image from that terrible night etched on to her memory in agonising detail. ‘Although I fail to see what possible explanation you can come up with for your conduct.’ She paused theatrically. ‘Ah, I know. The lady was your long-lost sister—or your maiden aunt twice removed seeking shelter for the night. Is that how it was?’

‘No,’ he said, his mouth curling. ‘The situation was exactly as you read it. And before you ask—no, she wasn’t an old flame, either. I’d picked her up in a bar earlier in the evening. Satisfied?’

‘Please spare me the sordid details,’ Ashley said scornfully. ‘I don’t want to hear them.’

‘What did you want to hear, I wonder?’ he asked cynically. ‘Some cosy lie, designed to make you feel better, and whitewash the whole incident? Not a chance. I offered an explanation for what it’s worth, but no excuses.’

‘There is no possible excuse for what you did,’ she said bitterly. ‘And you have no right to walk back into my life, and—proposition me in this insulting way.’

‘The word is proposal,’ Jago interrupted sardonically. ‘A proposition has a totally different connotation, although you wouldn’t know anything about that, my little Puritan. You froze me off so many times during our brief but eventful engagement that it was a miracle I didn’t die from frostbite.’

‘Oh, I see,’ exclaimed Ashley, heavily sarcastic. ‘Then it’s all my fault. I should have allowed you to seduce me when you wanted to—and then this little local difficulty would never have happened.’

Jago pushed his plate away. ‘Seduction,’ he said levelly, ‘was never what I had in mind. All I wanted from you, Ash, was a little human warmth—a sign, however fleeting, that when we were married, you’d welcome my arms round you—enjoy going to bed with me. All I got was one terrified hysterical rebuff after another. Is it any real wonder that my courage failed at the prospect of a bride who turned to stone every time I came near her?’

‘And human warmth was presumably what the lady in the bar had to offer,’ said Ashley, her heart beating harshly and discordantly.

His smile was twisted. ‘No, it was slightly more than that. In fact, she made it quite clear that she fancied me rotten, and that was balm to my soul after having you fight me off night after night as if I was the Mad Rapist. I don’t go in for one-night stands as a rule, but she caught me at a weak moment, and I was more than ready to enjoy what she was offering.’ He paused. ‘Now you know everything.’

‘What a pity all I had to offer was Landons.’ Ashley drank some coffee. ‘And what a pity you wanted not just the cake, but the icing too. Getting control of the company eventually wasn’t enough for you—you wanted passion as well. It never occurred to you that I might not feel particularly passionate towards a man who was using me only as a stepping stone to being chairman of the board.’

There was a silence. He said at last, ‘Frankly, no, it never occurred to me.’

‘You were clearly too used to finding your attractions irresistible,’ she said savagely. ‘And I was young and naïve, and easily conned, or so you thought. But I soon realised what the score was.’

‘My congratulations on your perspicacity,’ he said ironically. ‘But if you expect me to bow my head and creep away in shame, you can think again. It alters nothing as far as I’m concerned. In fact, it almost makes things easier. You came to terms once with being married for Landons. Why not again? After all, you said only five minutes ago you’d give all you had to save Landons. Well, all I’m asking is our joint names on a marriage certificate—nothing more.’

Ashley laughed. ‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘Believe what you please,’ he said curtly. ‘But my little experiment at the Country Club last night told me loud and clear that nothing’s changed between us, that you wouldn’t countenance me as a lover at any price. Well, I can accept that. Three years ago I tried to woo you into becoming my wife in the fullest sense of the word, and failed. So at least now we know where we stand. And didn’t Silas always say his motto was “The end justifies the means”?’

‘Yes,’ she said huskily. ‘He always used to say that. But I don’t believe that any result could justify what you’re proposing. Why are you doing this?’

‘I’ve told you—I liked Silas, and I respected him and everything he was trying to do. If you hadn’t turned up at the flat that night, we’d have got married and struggled along somehow for the sake of Landons. In fact, if I’d been around to take some of the pressure off him, Silas would probably still be here now, and don’t think I haven’t blamed myself for that. Perhaps this is my way of trying to make reparation.’

‘But everyone will know why we’re getting married …’ Even in her own ears, the protest sounded stock and feeble.

‘What will they know?’ he asked. ‘They’ll know that we had some kind of rift three years ago, and parted. And now, older and wiser, we’re together again.’ He gave her a wintry smile. ‘Our tender embrace at the Country Club won’t have gone unremarked, you can bet. Anyone remotely interested in our private affairs will take it for granted that our reconciliation began there and then.’ He paused. ‘When’s the next board meeting?’

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