Man Trouble

The insult was unbearable. So painful, she felt almost sick. It was worse than all his other insults that night of her birthday. He had accused her of every moral misdemeanour in the book of proprieties. She had tried to explain the situation with Nicholas but, up against a barrage of raw accusations and offensive remarks, what chance had she stood? According to proud Mel Biaggio, she had deceived him, hurt him, cheated him and insulted him. He never wanted to see her again as long as he lived. It had turned out to be the worst night of her life instead of what should have been one of the happiest.

She watched him come round the side of her desk, her eyes misted by that insult, her heart flapping weakly in her breast He stopped, only inches from her. She felt his heat and steeled herself against it, wishing with her very soul that she hadn’t started all this. She should have known that his fiery Mediterranean ancestry harboured no leeway for forgiveness.

His breath, when he spoke, came with the heat of the devil, fanning her responses till she almost physically recoiled from him.

‘I wonder if you are still such a bargain, or if perhaps life has finally taught you what honour is? I can’t resist the temptation to try you out.’ His voice was leaden with menace and his mouth so close to hers that it was almost touching. ‘Don’t kid yourself that it’s a weakness on my part. One thing you taught me was never to let a little tease like you get under my skin again.’

Jade naively opened her mouth to form some sort of insult in retaliation, but her parted lips were given no chance to respond. They were suddenly claimed by his, hot and punishing and so shockingly sexual that all fight she might have summoned if forewarned disappeared for evermore.

His arms slid around her, crushing her to him just in case she thought of escape. Hard arms that had once melted her bones and melded her to him in the prelude to their passion. His mouth, scouring hers so painfully now, was a wicked reminder of the depth of feeling that had once charged between them. But then that feeling had had its roots in love and desire; now it was powered by the need for punishment.

Jade knew this and yet it made no difference to the aching need that Mel’s kiss thrust into her unwilling heart. She didn’t want to want him but she did. After all this time she still yearned for a small miracle to happen so that he would love her again. She wanted to tear herself away but couldn’t. She knew she should be making some attempt to fight him but she couldn’t.

She was utterly weak and senseless and she thought he must have sensed her submission. For one fleeting second she imagined his lips were softening. Was she willing the pressure to ease, to soften away from punishment and veer towards what they had once been to each other—passionate lovers?

She didn’t know. The only thing she was sure of was that Mel Biaggio could still arouse her so deeply that she lost all control. And that must mean that he was still very much in her heart, and the thought was despairing and so very painful.

Her eyes were filled with tears of past regrets as she drew back from him, the first to move. So much loss and so much heartache to carry on living with. Where was the indifference she had hoped would take the place of her love after four years without sight of him?

He was completely unaffected by her look of despair, his eyes cold as his hands dropped to his sides.

Jade stared at him, determinedly now, the tears swallowed down hard and her eyes clear once again. She was the first to speak—bitingly, to hide the hurt.

‘If I had thought you had sunk that low, Mel, I would never have dreamt of asking for your help. You came here today with no intention of even considering helping my company. Your sole purpose for being here is to insult me and humiliate me in revenge for what you think I did to you four years ago.’

He shook his head and his mouth twisted into a cruel half-smile. ‘Revenge has nothing to do with my coming here today, Jade,’ he grated roughly. ‘And if you think that kiss was a punishment you are very wrong. What you think and feel is no concern of mine any more.’

There was nothing there, not a smidgeon of feeling for her, and it was irrational to be hurt but she couldn’t ignore the pain that sliced through her.

‘So why, Mel?’ she cried impatiently. ‘Why come here at all if it wasn’t to make a fool of me?’

‘I came here for my own selfish reasons,’ he told her darkly. ‘Something for me, nothing to benefit you, nothing to do with humiliation or insults or revenge.’ His eyes suddenly narrowed and his jaw stiffened. ‘I came here to lay a few ghosts of my past before I make the big commitment myself.’

He paused to let that sink in, a pause that homed in on its target—her heart—and then he added softly and yet lethally, striking where it hurt, ‘Get my drift?’

Jade stared at him in horror, her dark eyes wide and brimming with pain. She was skidding on emotional black ice and couldn’t stop. Her head was spinning. Had she got his drift, and was he…? Oh, so cruel, wicked even. She ran a tongue over dry lips before stuttering helplessly, ‘Y-you’re going to—to be married?’

There was a long, leaden silence before he responded. How clever he was at using those pauses to full effect. They were worse than words, the anticipation of what was to come the real cruelty.

‘That’s the drift,’ he murmured at last. ‘The ghosts of our past are firmly buried, Jade; and I’ll tell you something—I’m glad, relieved, too. I’ve just one small regret. I’d have liked to think that by kissing you I might have aroused just a small measure of remorse in you for what we lost, because then I could have asked you how you felt about my betrothal.’

He turned then and Jade squeezed shut her smarting eyes against the pain, to close the world out. When she opened them the world was still spinning and Mel Biaggio was smiling at her from the open doorway—a cold, cynical smile. He held her file aloft.

‘I’ll take this with me. It’ll make good bedtime reading. I’m a slave to insomnia. Hopefully, this should cure it.’

He slammed the door after him and shakily Jade sank into her chair and covered her face with her trembling hands. No, this couldn’t be happening; she hadn’t heard right, she hadn’t got his drift and this was all too awful to bear. Mel, the great womaniser, had finally made a commitment to the woman he loved, and she, Jade Ritchie, wasn’t that woman. Somehow it was so much worse knowing that his reputation had been grounded at last, because that must mean the lady in question was someone very special. Far more special than she had ever been to him. Oh, it hurt, so very much.

How irrational could you get? she asked herself in abject misery, because now she knew exactly how Mel had felt that night her father had announced her engagement to Nicholas. Totally, utterly betrayed and deeply hurt. And it was stupid, stupid, stupid, this awful feeling inside her, because he wasn’t a part of her life any more. And yet he would be if he took her and her ailing company on. Everything was getting desperately worse instead of better…

CHAPTER TWO

JADE had her feelings of betrayal under control a few days later. How could she feel betrayed when she hadn’t seen him for four years? But the truth was that she had never completely given up hope because he had always been in her heart. All the time she’d been reading about his latest amorous adventures with women in the gossip columns she’d allowed that hope to stay firmly implanted in her. Perverse as it might seem, she had thought that so long as he was womanising he wasn’t finally lost to her. Now that he was about to be married, however, he definitely was. It was a thought she was trying to come to terms with and she was not having a whole lot of success. When you were dealt a devastating blow like that it wasn’t easy to carry on as if the world was still turning.

‘You’re not cooking for me, are you?’ Nicholas asked, coming up behind her in the kitchen part of the open-plan living area. ‘I’m leaving for Paris almost immediately. The taxi will be here in a minute.’

‘I know, I heard you ringing for it, and I’m not cooking, just heating up some canned soup. How long will you be away?’

‘A couple of days. Did Mel Biaggio get in touch with you?’

Jade stirred the soup and gave a small sigh. ‘Yes, while you were in Belgium. No go, I’m afraid. After looking at my financial statements he said I couldn’t afford him.’ She didn’t tell him the content of the rest of their talk because Nicholas, being the sweetie he was, would show such concern that she’d be in tears before she knew it.

‘Arrogant swine.’

‘He has a point,’ Jade said defensively. ‘I’d have to mortgage this apartment to afford his fees.’

‘Don’t even think about it. I’ll advance you the money.’

Jade turned to him, grinned and tweaked his chin. ‘Your wedding money? Trisha would have a fit. She only tolerates you living here because I don’t charge you rent and you can save quicker. Thanks for the offer, though; you’re an angel. But it isn’t the answer. I’m going to have to swallow my pride and—’

‘Bargain with him?’ Nicholas suggested with a thin smile.

‘No way,’ Jade retorted, and then sighed heavily. ‘I’m going to have to tell Daddy. Hopefully he’ll inject some money into the company and I’ll struggle on.’

Nicholas took the wooden spoon from her, placed it on the counter, and put his hands on her shoulders. He was serious, worried about her. ‘You said you couldn’t bear the thought of facing him, and you know that isn’t the answer anyway, Jade. In another year you’d be back in the same position and beholden to your father again. The company needs restructuring and you need financial advice too, and Mel Biaggio is the only one who can help.’

‘Can’t you help?’ Jade pleaded softly, her limpid brown eyes wide and appealing. ‘You could look over the books and—’

‘I would have offered help before now if I thought I could be of service, but it isn’t my field, Jade,’ Nicholas insisted. ‘Biaggio has the expertise. I wish I knew him personally; I’d have a word with him—’

The door buzzer went and Nicholas shrugged and let her go. ‘That’s the cab. I have to dash. Chin up, sweetheart. We’ll talk about it when I get back.’

‘Have a good trip,’ she murmured as he went out of the door.

‘I’m lonely,’ she muttered to the soup. ‘Resorting to talking to a pan of soup because there’s no one special in my life. But once there was…’

Mel groaned as he gathered her lovingly into his arms, nuzzling her warm hair as they lay sprawled in the corn-field. A perfect day, a perfect picnic; everything was perfect.

‘I hate parties, ‘ he moaned. ‘It’ll mean I’ll have to share you. Can’t we just swish away on a magic carpet to somewhere romantic for your birthday? Paris would be perfect. The city of lovers.’

Jade giggled and twined his hair around her fingers. ‘Daddy would never forgive you for whisking his baby away on her twenty-first. Besides,’ she added, her voice low, seductive and teasing, ‘you want to meet him, don’t you? Haven’t you something special you want to discuss with him?’

‘Like his daughter’s hand in marriage?’

He looked down at her, his eyes so full of love and adoration that her heart squeezed. He lowered his head and gently pulled at her lower lip with his teeth, mur-muring, ‘Do people still do that these days?’

‘Not before they’ve made their intention quite clear to the lady in question,’ she laughed.

He grinned down at her. ‘Was that ever in dispute, my pocket-sized princess? I adored you from the moment I first set eyes on you queuing for bagels in Harrods food hall.’

‘Doughnuts,’ she corrected him and they both started to laugh, remembering how corny their first meeting had been. Jade had dropped her purse and her money had scattered; everyone had helped to gather it up and then, in the confusion, she had tried to pay with pesetas, not pounds, because she’d just come back from Spain. People had grown impatient and Mel had stepped in, paying for her and then gently taking her by the elbow and steering her out of the food hall and into his life.

‘What ever happened to those doughnuts?’ he murmured now as his mouth closed over hers in a kiss so deep and moving it was a perfect demonstration of how they felt about each other. Theirs was a wonderful, wonderful love, and they had a perfect future to look forward to.

She had every intention of introducing Nicholas to Mel at her twenty-first birthday party. They had been so wrapped up in themselves these past weeks that she hadn’t considered her friends. Her father had organised a lavish party at their Kent home, Bankton House, as usual going over the top to compensate for Jade not having a mother. Her mother had left when she was a small child, not able to live with John Ritchie’s overbearing temperament a minute longer. Her father organised everyone’s life. He did it the night of her party with disastrous results.

When Mel arrived she greeted him happily, but before she had a chance to whirl him around to meet her father and Nicholas another crowd of guests arrived.

He brushed a kiss across her hair. ‘See what I mean? I’m having to share you. Come back soon, princess,’ he teased, and then, with an understanding smile, he moved across the hall to the drawing-room buffet and bar. And that was where he was standing when John Ritchie got to his feet to make a speech Jade had known nothing about in advance. Her father opened his mouth and sent Jade’s world crashing.

She caught the look of horror on Mel’s face, but before she could reach him Nicholas clutched at her arm. He saw it as some sort of joke.

‘Us, engaged to be married? Your father’s drunk, surely?’ He laughed.

Jade supposed Mel had witnessed Nicholas grasping her arm and laughing and assumed they were indeed a happy couple. Then, to make it worse, people surrounded her and Nicholas, offering congratulations and good wishes. Nicholas was laughing and spluttering, thinking it all a hoot, and by the time Jade could tear herself away Mel had disappeared. She found him getting into his Jaguar on the floodlit gravel drive, tearing his bow tie from the collar of his evening shirt.

‘Mel!’

He turned, face gaunt and pale, eyes as hard as steel.

‘Mel, you don’t understand—’

‘I understand you hadn’t the courage to tell me to my face. You callous—’

‘Please don’t, Mel. You must listen. Nicholas and I-’

‘Are engaged. Yes, I just heard. What sort of games are you playing, Jade?’ He gave her no chance to answer before blazing on, ‘God, what a fool you’ve made of me and what a character misjudgement I’ve made. You’re nothing but a rich, spoilt child with no thought for people’s feelings. You…’

The chicken soup frothed over the side of the pan and Jade grasped it and hurled it into the sink. Tears streamed down her face just as they had the night she’d pleaded with Mel to listen to reason. She’d blurted that she and Nicholas were just good friends but even as she’d said it she’d known it sounded hopelessly fragile. His Italian ancestry made no allowances for boy-girl relationships with no sexual undertones, but then Mel was a man of the world—surely he could see that Nicholas wasn’t a threat to their relationship?

But of course she’d got nowhere with her reasoning that fateful night. Mel had been too furious, too hurt, too betrayed to listen. Until then he’d never heard of Nicholas Fields and Jade knew she’d made a grave mistake in not mentioning him before. Her only excuse, not even voiced to Mel, was that their affair had been so swift and intense that no one else had encroached on their lives—not her father, not Nicholas, not anyone.

The phone rang, jarring her nerves, and Jade brushed the tears from her face with the backs of her hands. She knew it would be Trisha, wanting to know if Nicholas had got off all right, and it was. Trisha’s caring for Nicholas only served to accentuate Jade’s loneliness. She envied what they had—a love, a life together, a future full of promise. She forced herself to laugh and joke with Trisha on the phone but her heart was heavy with the emptiness of her life.

‘Mel Biaggio has been ringing all morning,’ Diane, Jade’s secretary, told her when she came in late after an unsuccessful meeting with the company bank manager. He could only offer so much, and it was not nearly enough.

Jade gazed at Diane in disbelief, her heart leaping wildly. ‘Mel Biaggio?’ she breathed, slipping out of her overcoat. ‘Did he say what he wanted?’

Diane grinned ruefully. ‘I did ask but he wouldn’t say. I told him you’d be in at lunchtime and he said he’d see you then.’

Jade paled at the thought. He was coming here, just when she had got herself together after his last visit. Had he changed his mind about helping out? After all, he had taken the file with him. But perhaps he’d decided he hadn’t punished her enough and was coming in for another stab at her!

She was ready for him when he arrived. Afraid but outwardly in control of her fear.

He crossed her office, tall, dark and maddeningly handsome, hardly looking at her as he approached. He tossed the file down on her desk. For a horrible second it occurred to Jade that the return of it was the only reason he was here.

‘Th-thank you,’ she murmured, eyeing him warily, wondering why he hadn’t sent it by courier.

His face was expressionless as he spoke. ‘I’ve given this a lot of thought and have a proposition to put to you.’

Jade widened her eyes. ‘You’ve had a change of heart?’ she uttered, and prayed her voice didn’t sound too hopeful.

‘Certainly not where you are personally concerned,’ he clipped. ‘I’d like to look over the place.’

Jade stared at him, smarting from his cold insult and puzzled by his request.

‘Why?’ she asked directly.

‘I want to see what I’m letting myself in for,’ he told her coldly.

Her heart didn’t even miss a beat at the thought that he was considering taking the job on. His attitude dismayed her. He was so cold and clinical and once he hadn’t been…But they weren’t lovers now and never would be again; this was business, and the only reason he was here, she reminded herself.

‘So…so you think you can help?’ He nodded. ‘But why? Last week you said I couldn’t afford you. Nothing’s changed, Mel.’

‘My thinking has,’ he told her as he slid out of his cashmere coat and threw it down on a chair. ‘Now, before I make a final decision are you going to show me around, or is my journey wasted?’

Jade steeled herself, and it was surprisingly easy now. This man before her wasn’t the man she had loved so passionately. This Mel was different. He gave off not one scrap of warmth or sincerity. He was hard and unfeeling…and was only here to do a job, she reminded herself yet again.

‘Before I show you anything, Mel, you must make your intentions clearer,’ she said formally. ‘I’ve a lot to cope with at the moment and if this is your idea of more punishment for what happened between us forget it.’

‘I won’t forget it till the day I die,’ he said coldly, his eyes intense. ‘But that isn’t why I’m here today. I pride myself on my professionalism and I don’t think I gave you a fair hearing before.’

Jade’s brows shot up in surprise. There was more to this than met the eye. ‘Or perhaps you were thinking of your reputation,’ she suggested knowingly.

He frowned. ‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning word might have got around that you’d turned my company down because we were too small and ineffectual to promote your image as a high-flyer.’ She couldn’t resist that. It was very likely, too.

He smiled very thinly. ‘I doubt you or any of your associates could harm my reputation or my image, Jade. You really are too small.’

She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘Sometimes good things come in small packages—quantity isn’t a guarantee of quality.’

He didn’t say a word. His eyes locked onto hers and she felt mesmerised for a few seconds, then embarrassed when she got the message they were sending her. Small packages, pocket-sized princesses. Oh, she didn’t want him here, looking at her like that, slamming their past at her with knowing looks.

She stretched taller, stiffened her shoulders, picked up a pen from the desk and thrummed it in her palm. ‘I think you are wasting time, Mel—yours and mine. This isn’t going to work out. There are other troubleshooters and-’

‘They won’t give you the time of day, Jade.’

‘So what are you doing back here?’ she burst out, rage welling inside her. Why couldn’t he have stayed away? Oh, how she wished she had never involved him. It was awful, awful. ‘You’ve no intention of giving your services. This is a personal vendetta and—’

‘You were the one who called me in,’ he challenged.

‘Someone recommended you,’ she argued. ‘Because you’re the best.’ She cooled her tone but spiked it with sarcasm. ‘In my opinion your best stinks. I wish I hadn’t bothered—’

‘So do I,’ he sliced back at her. ‘Because I can see trouble ahead all the way.’

‘And with good reason. You’ve done nothing but put me down since stepping into my office and I don’t have to take that—’

‘Well, you’ll have to get used to it because there’s going to be plenty more where that came from,’ he interrupted darkly.

‘What do you mean?’

He stepped right up to her desk, leaned towards her and spoke levelly, his features, as usual, a mask of cold hostility. ‘If I take this fiasco on I’m going to be breathing down your neck so hard you are going to need stabilisers to stay on your feet. I’m going to be digging so deep I’ll rock your foundations. I’m going to be probing every weakness and treading on every slack nerve I find. Can you take that, I wonder?’

She glared at him in defiance. ‘What exactly is that supposed to mean? Are you talking about the ad agency or was that a personal threat to me?’

His mouth thinned to a semblance of a smile. ‘It boils down to the same thing, Jade. You run this company so every weak link leads back to you. I’ll ask you again, can you take it?’

Was there a choice? For a full half-minute she considered it, trying not to let her heart interfere and overrule her sensibility. Could she take Mel breathing down her neck, metaphorically or otherwise? There was no choice, other than to face her father with her failure, and oddly she’d rather face Mel. When this was over Mel would be gone; her father was with her for life.

‘Of course I can take it,’ she fired back at him at last. ‘I wouldn’t have put up with all you’ve dished out to me so far if I didn’t want the best for the company and

my staff.’

‘And what do you want for yourself out of all this, if I decide to stay?’ he asked heavily.

Her heart and soul cried out for what she truly wanted. In spite of everything—his verbal brutality and coldness—she wanted everything they had lost. The long, hot summer and their love, the intensity of passion and sweet pleasure of living each precious moment for each other. But that wasn’t possible. Mel was going to be married and lost to her for ever. Jade took a deep, controlling breath and spoke with sincerity.

‘I’ve failed my father’s trust in me. I want to make things right for the future of the company and for myself I want peace of mind,’ she told him slowly.

He looked at her long and hard before replying smoothly, ‘I wonder if you know what you do want, Jade? I’m also beginning to wonder if your requesting my services has anything remotely to do with the business.’

Jade’s mouth dropped open in astonishment and a fire scorched her spine at his veiled suggestion. Had she given something away—a look, a thought, a misplaced word? He couldn’t think this was personal, surely? No, that was impossible—but then he did have some ego to nurture, she reminded herself. She forced a smile to cover her acute embarrassment.

‘I wouldn’t have you back if you came with a knighthood,’ she told him disparagingly. ‘You think you were the only one hurt that night, Mel. Your bigoted attitude damaged my love for you more than you could ever know.’ Her eyes narrowed with anger. ‘You gave me no space to explain. You wanted to believe it all because it was an easy way out for you. After all, your womanising ways weren’t cultivated after we split up. You were born with them!’