Man Trouble

‘We were an excellent match, then, weren’t we?’ he grazed back at her sarcastically.

Her shoulders slumped in an unguarded second of defeat. How could she even begin to think that she could ever have any effect on him? He could hurt her so easily but her poisoned arrows hit an unyielding force, and because of that hostile defence of his she knew this could never work out. It was impossible for them to bury the past and channel their energies into getting her agency back on line.

‘Yes, we were,’ she agreed because it was the only way to be rid of him. Let them both think the worst of each other. ‘And it’s why this won’t work. I thank you for your interest but it’s not on.’

‘My God, you’re fickle,’ he grated cynically. ‘Is this why things have gone wrong here—because of your indecisiveness ? You want my help, then you don’t. Your back is against the wall, Jade. I’m your only saviour and you know it,’ he informed her tightly.

‘Yes, you are,’ she acknowledged, inwardly agreeing that he had a point about indecisiveness. With him drawing the air from the room with his magnetism she couldn’t stick to any firm decision. She couldn’t think clearly any more. She had to, though. She had to force herself to think. Her dark eyes narrowed. ‘But I might decide none of this is worth saving. I might decide bankruptcy has a nice ring to it as opposed to the ring of your insults in my ears!’

He smiled cynically. ‘Bankruptcy is a painful state, sweetheart. Loss of kudos, status and very probably your home, your car and your valuables. I wonder if you could bear that?’

‘You don’t frighten me,’ she returned, though her in-sides coiled tightly at the thought that he could think such things of her. ‘But your arguments are a fair indication of what is important in your life: everything that pertains to materialism and ego,’ she said bitingly. ‘I wanted your help to save my employees more than my valuables, and, yes, my pride where my father is concerned.’ She lifted her small chin. ‘As an Anglo-Italian that might strike a chord with you. I’ve failed and I’m not afraid to admit it to you but my father is something else. He had faith in me and I failed him and…and I can’t bear to face him.’

Oh, no, she could feel the tears flaming at the backs of her eyes. Damn him for exposing her vulnerability with such ease. She tossed the pen down on the desk, turned away from him and made for the door. She held it open, composed now, and defiant too. She’d cope, and without any help from him. She’d remortgage her flat, pawn her wretched valuables if it came to it. What she wouldn’t do was humble herself to him any more!

‘Actually, Mel Biaggio,’ she said stoically,’I owe you an enormous debt, but one I’m not going to offer any payment for. I’ll take it as a freebie. Your insults and put-downs have served me very well. I’ll fight this on my own if it’s the last thing I do, just to prove to you I’m not that rich, spoilt child you keep insisting I am.’

She rapped her nails on the door to indicate that her patience was running thin and she would like him to leave. He made no movement, simply held her gaze with steely eyes as if wondering if she had it in her to struggle along on her own. Jade read the look and was more determined than ever. She’d do it, and on her own, too. Her fingers tightened round the edge of the door, willing him to hurry up and pass through it.

She smiled sweetly. ‘Do let me know your wedding day, Mel, so I can send your intended my very best wishes…and sympathies,’ she added meaningfully. If that didn’t shift him nothing would, she thought.

Success. Slowly he moved towards her, without his coat. She parted her lips to remind him but he was upon her before she could utter a word. He took her arm and propelled her through the door. His grip on her was iron-hard and determined.

‘You’ll be the last to know my wedding date, sweetheart,’ he breathed, keeping his voice low because Diane was in the outer office. ‘And now that I know you are determined to get this agency bouncing its merry little way along the road to success we’ll get started,’

Once they were out in the corridor she breathlessly pulled her arm from his grip. Her cheeks were flaming as she swung to face him. He could talk of indecisiveness! He was the one who was up and down. So he was going to help, was he? If so, she wanted a promise from him to cool it, forget the past and get the job done. This was business and it needed to be separated from emotions. Emotions were draining.

She took a deep breath. ‘There are conditions—’

The laughter that cut her off wasn’t fired by humour. ‘I make the conditions , sweet one, and you just do as you’re told.’

Gritting her teeth, without another word Jade turned away from him and led the way to the stairwell, her stomach churning. Grit and bear it, not even grin and bear it, was going to be her motto from now on. It was all quite unbearable but she had no choice but to put up with it. Halfway up the stairs to the next floor, in control again, her emotions buried deep inside her, she spoke.

‘Administration’s on my floor, the studio above,’ she told him without looking at him.

‘Just the two floors?’

‘This is Soho, not the Sahara,’ she told him flintily. “The rents are astronomical around here.’

‘Perhaps that’s where you’re failing—not thinking big enough,’ Mel parried.

‘Perhaps I know my capabilities and live within them,’ she retorted sharply.

He made no comment but held the swing door open for her. Her arm brushed his as she passed through. Both were adequately clothed, Jade in a cherry-red suit, the jacket cut in sharply to accentuate her tiny waist, and Mel in a Savile Row creation in silver-grey, but she felt the contact as acutely as if they had both been naked. Her eyes flicking up to his, she wondered if he had been as aware of the contact as she had. His leaden eyes gave nothing away and she despised herself for her own recollection of times long gone when any touch, however slight, had sparked thrillingly between them.

She paused in the tiny foyer outside the studio before entering. Nodding towards the glass doors through which you could see the whole layout of the floor, she told him, ‘As you can see, some of the boards are vacant. I’ve got three key staff off with a flu bug.’

‘Let’s hope you don’t go down with it, then. It only takes a kiss for these things to spread like the plague.’

His eyes were gleaming with mockery as he said it and he was standing close enough for an infectious kiss. Jade didn’t know why that thought had even occurred to her when she was still wondering if that was another stab at her supposed loose morals of four years back. Whatever, she warded him off with her own preventative remedy-biting sarcasm.

‘You’re in for a chronic overdose of whatever’s doing the rounds, then,’ she retorted tartly, turning her back on him to push open the inner door of the studio, his low, not madly amused laughter making the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

She showed him around the studio, thinking how jaded it all looked when you were forced to see it through someone else’s eyes. New equipment was needed, new enthusiasm, an injection of fresh spirit. Jade stood on the sidelines, listening to what Mel had to say and not interfering but resenting the enthusiasm and keenness he seemed to be drawing from her all-male artistic staff. She supposed word had got round that things weren’t going terribly well in the company and they saw Mel Biaggio’s interest as something positive. If Mel agreed to help she’d have to inform them that he was a trouble-shooter and there would be inevitable changes.

‘Every one of them needs a kick in the rear,’ he told her sourly as they concluded their tour of inspection, Mel holding the door open for her, Jade avoiding brushing against him again.

She swallowed his contempt and kept her objections to herself. He’d warned her what to expect and she’d have to take it or face the consequences. She was learning but it wasn’t easy.

‘ Who occupies the ground floor of the building?’ Mel asked as they returned to the first floor, where the offices were. Jade led him through the main open-plan office, and it was obvious that most of the female staff were stunned at the sight of Mel, tall, charismatic and God’s gift to the young and nubile.

‘It’s vacant at the moment,’ she told him.

He said nothing till they were back in her office and then he shot the lot at her, taking her breath away with his suggestions.

‘You have to be joking!’ she protested hotly. This was ridiculous. ‘I can’t afford to expand. How can I take on another floor when I can scarcely raise the rent for two? As for taking on more staff, there’s scarcely enough work for the ones I’ve got after that creep creamed off my best clients.’ She was almost trembling with rage. This was his revenge once again. His suggestions were crazy. If she took them up ruin would slap her in the face sooner rather than later. Was that his intention? To take his revenge to the very end—total destruction?

His eyes darkened at her protestations. ‘You can’t get any lower than you already are, Jade. There’s only one way out of this situation and that is up. Now, if you are scared of the challenge quit now, because you’re no good to me if you don’t think positively. You’ll need financing and I can help; you’ll need new contacts and I’ll help. I can put key staff in here who will inject new enthusiasm…’

In awe Jade listened to it all, acknowledging the power and energy the man had and realising why he was so successful. She felt her spirits lift for her company but still a deep part of her lamented her emotional loss. She knew she shouldn’t even be considering her own feelings when he was outlining plans for saving her company but she couldn’t help the snap of sorrow squeezing at her heart. With all these changes going on he would be around a lot. Would she be able to cope with the sight of him? With the knowledge that every day was bringing him closer to his wedding day—the day when she would know for sure it was finally over?

Mel picked up his coat from the chair. ‘I’ll turn this company around in three months,’ he told her at last.

‘And…and your price?’ she uttered weakly, still dazed by his restructuring plans.

Slowly he came across the thick carpet to her, something so strange in his eyes that she steeled herself. The crunch was about to come, she sensed, some exorbitant fee that would cancel out any profits that might come from his new plans for the company.

After folding his coat over one arm, his hand came up to grip her chin quite firmly. His touch was paralysing, numbing her limbs and yet making her nerve-endings tingle. His dark, broody eyes captured hers so utterly compellingly that she had no choice but to stare at him, wide-eyed.

‘At the end of three months, if not before, you’ll know my price, sweetheart,’ he said in a dark undertone which made his words sound more like a threat than anything else. ‘But don’t ever forget I don’t come cheap.’

Jade ran the feverish tip of her tongue over her lower lip—the lip he was scorching with his eyes. She felt danger shiver down her spine. It was the way he was looking at her…as if…as if he wanted to claim those lips.

‘I’ll pick you up at nine,’ he breathed softly. ‘Dinner and more discussions before we get this rolling.’ She opened her mouth to protest. ‘Don’t argue,’ he cut in before she could. ‘I’ve warned you. Just remember I always know best,’

He left her suffering yet another indignity, which washed over her like a tidal wave. The indignity of not having any choice but to put up with his arrogant pomposity. No, Mel Biaggio didn’t come cheap. She would pay the price all right, more than she could have envisaged at the outset of all this. In fact she had started the instalments already. She was going to pay dearly for ever having fallen in love with him.

CHAPTER THREE

JADE had already decided she wouldn’t invite him up to the apartment when he arrived. He’d buzz and she’d be ready and she’d tell him over the intercom she was on her way down. She wasn’t going to allow him into her space, to suffer him looking around critically and making disparaging remarks about her lifestyle, which she was sure he would, just to be unpleasant.

He saved her the trouble when he buzzed and said to hurry down as he had the engine running. It was precisely nine o’clock. He couldn’t have been more on the dot if he’d been the keeper of Big Ben.

Jade took one last look at herself in the mirror. Why had she bothered to make herself look special? she wondered. Was it for him or just for her own self-esteem? She felt so tight inside, she wasn’t at all sure about her reasons for anything any more. She wore a clingy black velvet dress softened with a cream and peach silk scarf around her throat. Her heels were the highest she could stagger in. They were making a comeback after flatties being in fashion for so long. She’d always worn risky heels with him, though, he being so tall, she so small.

Her eyes were misty as she hurriedly slicked on another coat of red lipstick. She’d nervously drawn on her lips so much that there was hardly any colour left. As she’d got ready the past had flooded her, bringing with it the despair of her loss yet again. She’d loved dressing up for him when they were lovers. It had all been a ritual, everything done for his pleasure and approval. He’d adored her femininity, laughed at her feisty temper when aroused, hungered for her kisses. Now he despised her so openly that she dreaded facing him again, and yet here she was, checking and rechecking her appearance, and what for? More painful put-downs?

The last thing she did before turning away from the mirror was to harden her heart against him, pride adding to the steely determination. She looked the way she did for self-preservation, not his approval.

‘Why dinner, Mel? I’m sure we could have done all this in my office some time.’ Chin up, she settled into the passenger seat of his black BMW and he pulled away from the kerb. It was pouring with rain, with a biting wind to add to the misery of the winter night.

‘I don’t have some time, Jade. You’re not the only poor fish in the sea of troubled waters these days.’

‘How very poetic,’ Jade muttered. Then she drew in her breath as almost immediately they pulled up outside a restaurant they both knew very well from the past. This was a bit below the belt and she felt the blow as if it had been physically thrown. ‘Was it worth it?’ she snapped. ‘We could have walked around the corner.’

‘You, in those ridiculous heels?’ he said, opening his door and getting out.

He’d never disapproved of them before, she thought miserably, and supposed his woman wore designer trainers.

Jade made no further comment on his choice of venue as he put a steadying arm around her shoulders and they hurried into the crowded restaurant. She made no comment as the waiter ushered them to the same window seat they used to occupy, obviously requested by Mel to make her feel bad. She did comment on the change of view, however, to hide her floundering emotions and the deadly beat of her aching heart.

‘Didn’t that used to be a pizza house across the road?’ She hoped she sounded light and casually interested instead of desperately unhappy, which she was. This was his revenge, bringing her here to stir up old memories.

‘Looks like a Thai restaurant now,’ Mel said, leaning forward to peer through the window. ‘I’ve not been back since we split up,’ he added, so matter-of-factly that Jade knew none of this meant anything to him any more.

But why should it? He’d found love elsewhere and four years had passed anyway. She gazed miserably at the menu. Naturally it had changed over the years but there was nothing on it to bring her appetite back. She ordered fish and he followed suit and then she got down to business immediately, ignoring the twisting inside her as women gazed at the back of Mel’s head, probably wondering what a gorgeous man like him was doing out with a little nobody like her.

As Mel spoke Jade listened and drew herself out of her self-pity, raising her chin and squaring her shoulders as one of a group of businessmen across the room gave her a very interested look. It was as if Mel suddenly had psychic powers. He turned and caught the man looking and then gave her a withering look.

‘You haven’t changed, have you?’ he said pityingly.

‘Is that a serious question?’ she demanded tightly.

‘Rhetorical.’

‘Abysmal, Mel, like your thinking. I wasn’t flirting. If you must know I was sitting here feeling very sorry for myself and wondering how far I had sunk in these last years to end up dining with you, and then that good-looking young man gave me an encouraging look and I responded because he made me feel attractive and alive and not the total waste of time you obviously think I am.’

He said nothing for a while, just twirled his water glass in his fingers as he studied it with equal intensity. When he did finally speak his words made her uncomfortable in her seat.

‘After all these years I still want to punch the jaw of any man who looks at you.’

She recovered quickly. ‘I doubt that. You’d rather punch my jaw, as you symbolically did by thinking I was two-timing you four years ago. You haven’t changed either, Mel,’ she finished contemptuously.

The waiter brought them wine and Mel studied her across the table as she sipped hers. ‘I think we’d better keep to business before we upset each other any more,’ he suggested at last.

‘Honesty upsets you, does it?’ Jade couldn’t resist taunting.

‘Stop it, Jade,’ he warned. ‘It isn’t funny and it isn’t sensible if I’m going to be involved in your daily business.’

He was right, of course. She remembered his warning: ‘Don’t argue’. She might as well have her tongue stitched to the roof of her mouth and be done with it.

‘You were saying something about putting in a new head of the art department,’ she started, determined to get all this over and done with so that she could go home and curl up in misery on the sofa for the rest of the night.

‘Yes, I have someone very talented who would fit the bill.’

Jade braced herself. ‘Mel, I know you said I wasn’t to argue, so don’t take this as arguing, take it as a statement of fact. My problems aren’t with the art department. The staff I have are very talented. I’ve fallen down in other departments and that is where I need your advice.’

‘You need a new art director,’ he insisted.

Jade held her palms up to him. ‘I’m not arguing, honest, but I have enough talent to promote someone within my own staff without bringing in someone from outside.’

He glowered at her. ‘If that isn’t arguing, I don’t know what is.’

Jade sighed. ‘You can’t expect me to lie down and take it all without giving an opinion.’

He’d obviously expected exactly that. His eyes narrowed, daring her to say another word.

‘OK.’ She sighed again and drew in a last defiant breath. ‘If you must you must, but I can’t afford to take a risk with some fresh-faced kid just out of art school who thinks he’s going to change the face of advertising with a working model of a Lamborghini made out of cornflake packets!’

To her astonishment he burst out laughing and his amusement cut right through her till she almost winced with pain. Their affair might have been short and explosive but they had lived and loved and laughed so very much and how she had missed him, so very, very much.

He refilled their wineglasses, still shaking his head. Jade watched him with stinging eyes and a heart that felt as if it was pounding its last beats. What a waste, what a loss, what a fool she had been not to force him to listen that night.

‘It’s a she, not a he,’ he said after putting the wine bottle back into the ice bucket.

The waiter brought their main course and Jade waited till he’d gone before asking, ‘Who is a she, not a he?’

‘Your new art director.’

A chill went down Jade’s spine. Knowing his tabloid reputation with the opposite sex, she was sure to have had an intimate relationship with him at one time. She might be his she! No, his fiancĂe certainly wouldn’t need to earn her own living.

“The boys aren’t going to like that!’ Jade exclaimed. All her art staff were men because the few women they had tried couldn’t keep up the pace.

“That sounds sexist.’

Jade shrugged and gave a small smile. ‘I suppose it does but I’m not sexist. Give me a girl who can stand the pace and won’t get pregnant and I’ll take her on.’

‘That is definitely sexism,’ Mel insisted.

Her smile broadened. ‘I was quoting my father, actually. You know, the one with the big mouth and the Draconian temperament?’

‘I never got around to the pleasure of meeting him,’ Mel grazed, and fixed her with an icy glare that wiped the smile from her mouth and brought a flush to her cheeks.

She shouldn’t have mentioned her father and, worse, tried to make a joke of him. Her intention had been to lighten the atmosphere between them but she had failed miserably, her choice of subject appalling under the circumstances. She regretted it deeply.

‘And I can personally guarantee that Nadia won’t get pregnant,’ Mel added with such conviction that it was like another whiplash to her senses.

Jade stared down at her fish, feeling as limp and as lifeless as the poor thing sprawled on her plate. He could only make a guarantee like that if he was very heavily involved. This Nadia was his intended, the woman he loved, the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with. And Mel Biaggio was about to install her at the heart of her company!

She tried to swallow but it was impossible. She was so choked up she thought she might as well roll over and die right now. She would never be able to cope with having this Nadia thrust at her from all sides. It was cruel and wicked and he knew exactly what he was doing—punishing her. But for it all to be effective he must think she still cared because there would be no point otherwise.

Nervously she reached for her wineglass. He must never know how she still felt about him. Never, but never would she allow him to have any idea that he was getting to her.

She smiled, forcing normality and genuine interest into her tone. She forced courage into her heart, too. “This Nadia woman. Is she the one—the one who is going to end your womanising ways?’

‘What do you think?’ His eyes were clear and unyielding and Jade thought she read cruelty in them. He was enjoying this, hoping he was getting to her.

‘I suppose she must be,’ she sighed wearily. And he had verbally guaranteed her childless state for the time being, obviously not ready for a family yet. Oh, it didn’t bear thinking about. She swallowed, fighting to sound normal. ‘Tell me about her. Do you really think she’ll be able to turn things around?’

‘She’ll be able to bring her own clients…’

Jade concentrated hard. This was awful—discussing his mistress joining her company. She wanted to walk out of the restaurant after telling him what to do with his help and advice, but then he would know she still cared and couldn’t face it. She took a deep breath.

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