Cruel Legacy (17 page)

'Oh, Joel.' She walked up to him, instinctively moving towards him, gripping hold of his upper arms. 'Don't look like that, love,' she begged him. 'It will be all right; we'll manage.' Instinctively she adopted the soothing, reassuring voice she used to her patients and small children; the look in his eyes frightened her. She had never seen him looking so vulnerable and defeated. 'It isn't as though we weren't expecting it.' She felt him move and then take hold of her, wrapping his arms around her, holding her almost painfully tightly as he buried his head against her.

'Sally...'

She tensed as the kitchen door opened and over his shoulder she saw Cathy walk in. Joel tensed too and she wasn't sure which one of them moved first, if it was she who pushed him slightly away or he who released her.

'What's wrong with Dad?' asked Cathy as Joel turned his back on them and walked out of the kitchen and towards the stairs without saying anything.

'Nothing,' Sally told her. She wanted to go after Joel and tell him everything would be all right, that they would manage, but Cathy was demanding her attention and she could hear Paul whistling outside. As she hesitated, the phone rang. She went to pick up the receiver, sighing as she heard her sister's voice on the other end of the line.

Daphne wanted to tell her about the new dress Clifford had bought her for a dinner date he was taking her to, and as she listened Sally could feel herself growing not just increasingly irritated with her sister but angry with her as well. How could she go on and on about her dress, boasting about how much it had cost, when she and Joel...? Quickly Sally swallowed down her feelings. It wasn't Daphne's fault that Joel had lost his job.

Upstairs Joel stared out of the bedroom window. His eyes, his throat, his whole body ached. He could hear Sally's voice from the kitchen as she assured Daphne that yes, she was sure that blue was the right colour. Joel's body stiffened in angry resentment. Even her damned sister meant more to her than he did. She'd got more time to talk to her about a dress than she had for him.

Just for a moment there in the kitchen, as he had held her, he had felt the warmth of her against him. It had almost been like the old days when it had been just the two of them, when they'd been so close that sometimes she'd even seemed to read his mind.

Just holding her like that and being held by her had felt so good... it had made him feel so much better. He had even been tempted to tell her how afraid he felt, how alone, but then Cathy had walked in and all at once
he
didn't matter any more.

Some of the men had been talking about picketing the factory, staging a sit-in. They had asked him to join them, but what was the point? It wouldn't bring their jobs back. Besides, he doubted that they'd actually go through with it. They were just a group of hot-heads who couldn't accept that there was nothing they could do; that they just weren't important enough, just didn't count enough to be able to do anything. That girl had made that much plain when she had talked about their redundancy money.

'Preferred creditors', she had called them, along with the tax people and the VAT people and God alone knew who else, and Joel could guess just who would come first when it came to getting their money and it wouldn't be them.

Was this what he had done his apprenticeship for...worked for? Today had underlined for him as nothing else had ever done just how little he mattered and just how little value he had as a human being.

He had wanted to share with Sally the pain and hurt of knowing that... had needed to share it with her. But she had more important things to do, like talk to her sister about a dress!

Deborah
paused outside the elegant building which housed the practice's office.

She had been surprised at first when Mark had told her that he wanted to leave London for somewhere quieter and more rural, but once she had been with him to the pretty cathedral city of Lincoln she had fallen in love with it as quickly and easily as she had done with Mark himself. She remembered now how it had crossed her mind when she'd come up here for her own first interview with the practice that it would be a good place to bring up children, and how astonished she had been to have had such a thought.

Children were not something which were on her current agenda; once she was past her thirtieth birthday, with her career firmly established, then she might think seriously about the issue.

Mark agreed with her; she could not envisage and did not want to envisage their relationship ending, but neither at the moment could she imagine herself settling into cosy domestic motherhood.

It had surprised her at first that the city should boast such a busy, thriving accountancy practice, but Mark had explained to her that the business had originally sprung up to service those clerics attached to the cathedral who had independent means, growing steadily from that to embrace the engineering industries developing in the nearby towns. As the industries had prospered, so too had the practice.

The neat lines and pretty demureness of the building gave Deborah pleasure. Not for the world would she have admitted this to anyone else; that almost sentimental romantic streak in her nature was a part of herself she preferred to keep private.

She could just imagine Ryan's reaction, for instance, if he ever caught her gazing dreamily at the building. He had been complaining only the previous month about how difficult it was to house modern technology inside such an old-fashioned shell.

It was no secret that he had tried to persuade the other partners to sell and move to a modern purpose-built office block on the outskirts of the city. They had not been of a mind to move, however, and Deborah suspected that Ryan's wife, Alice, had influenced their decision. She might not be an active partner in the business, but her father was still held in such great respect that her views were always listened to.

Ryan had been furious about it, virtually flaunting his relationship with his current lover in front of everyone in retaliation for his wife's refusal to do as he wished.

She had to know about his affairs, Deborah reflected, so why did she stay with him? Was it because she simply didn't care what he did? Some women were like that, but not her; if she ever discovered that Mark had been unfaithful to her...

It wouldn't be her pride that drove her to leave him if she did, nor even her self-respect; it would simply be the knowledge that something was broken... destroyed... that he... that their relationship was not, after all, all that she had thought.

The meeting at the factory had been far more difficult than she had envisaged—not because of the technical questions she had been asked, but because of the awareness of what her announcement was going to mean to the men who heard it.

She had already been unsettled by her interview with the widow, she admitted to herself as she walked into the building. She wondered what kind of man Andrew had been, to have left his wife so ill-prepared for the problems she was going to have to face.

She had heard one of the men at the factory commenting bitterly that he bet that Andrew had secreted enough money away so that his family wouldn't have to worry, and for a second her sympathy for Philippa Ryecart had almost overwhelmed her professionalism and she had been tempted to tell him how wrong he was.

She had done no such thing, of course.

She grimaced to herself, imagining Ryan's reaction to the news that she had allowed her emotions to get in the way of her professionalism. Mark would have understood, though. Mark! As she got into the lift she glanced at her watch, wondering if she had time to see him before her meeting with Ryan.

'Don't you trust me?' she had challenged Ryan when he had told her that he wanted her to report back to him after she had visited the factory.

'I do,' he had assured her. 'But you know how it is with some of the old brigade here.'

'You mean they don't think I'm up to handling this on my own?'

'They're an old-fashioned bunch. Some of them don't think that liquidation and receivership is a woman's field. How does Mark feel about your imminent promotion, by the way?' he added conversationally.

'He's very pleased for me,' Deborah had told him.

'Mmm, well, it takes all sorts, I suppose,' Ryan had told her, adding outrageously, 'Personally, I don't think I'd care too much for the thought of my woman overtaking me professionally. I like to be on top... Out of bed, although not necessarily in it.'

Deborah had known that she ought to make at least some sort of protest against his remark, even if it was only to point out to him that she was not Mark's 'woman', his possession, but his equal partner in their relationship; but equally she had also known that to do so was to allow herself to be drawn into the sexually flirtatious verbal conflict that Ryan loved and excelled at, and that, once having allowed him to draw her into that arena, she could potentially be leaving the door open for him to try to take things a stage further.

She had no illusions about his motives. Ryan would seduce her if he could and for no better reason than that it would amuse him to do so. She was heartily grateful for the fact that he was quite simply not her type. He was a very, very dangerous man, and, even recognising what he was and what he was doing, she was still aware that there was a tiny perverse and very feminine part of her that was very keenly aware of how easy it would he to fall into the trap of wanting to challenge so much openly chauvinistic masculinity and sexuality, to make him acknowledge the power of her femininity.

'Nothing to say?' he had teased her softly as she'd fought down an irritating inclination to drop her gaze from his.

'Sorry...' she apologised vaguely. 'What were you saying...?'

He had laughed then with one of those mercurial changes of temperament which made him so fascinating and so dangerous, but that night in bed with Mark, when he had switched their positions so that she was kneeling astride him, she had had a momentary and totally unwanted vision of Ryan. Even in allowing a woman the position which was supposed to establish her right of control, he would still demonstrate his need to dominate the situation; his hands, unlike Mark's, would not guide her gently on to his body, giving her the freedom to orchestrate her own pleasure, but would instead hold her captive to the exhibition of his own desire while he pretended to let her take control.

'What's wrong?' Mark had asked when she'd lifted herself away from him.

'Nothing,' she had told him as she'd lowered herself to take him in her mouth—out of guilt for thinking about another man at such an intimate moment, or out of the more prosaic realisation that on this occasion she was simply not likely to reach orgasm?

She wanted to be with Mark now, she admitted as she got out of the lift; she wanted to unburden herself to him, to let down her defences with him in a way she never could with Ryan and admit how much what she had had to do today had upset her.

However, Ryan was already walking down the corridor towards her.

'Good, you're back,' he announced. 'Come into my office and we'll run through everything.'

'A debriefing session?' Deborah asked him drily.

He gave her a quick, sexually challenging smile. 'My dear Deborah, I'd be delighted to debrief you if that's what you want... but not in my office, eh... ?'

Just in time Deborah managed to stop herself from grinding her teeth and pointing out that his comment, as well as being unsubtly schoolboyish, was also a form of sexual harassment.

It might be true, but it would also be counterproductive, so instead of making any response she ignored what he had said, simply accompanying him back to his office instead and sitting down in the chair he waved her into.

'So let's start with the bank and the widow,' Ryan instructed.

'As we already know the bank holds a charge over both the company assets, such as they are, and all the personal assets as well.'

'Which are?' he asked.

'Not very much: the equity in the house, and a handful of insurance policies, which of course are worth nothing since he committed suicide.'

'Mmm... and any private, hidden resources?'

'I don't think so,' Deborah told him. 'Or at least, if there were, his wife... widow... isn't aware of them.'

Her expression changed slightly as she remembered how shocked Philippa had looked when she had learned the full extent of her husband's debts.

'Are you sure about that? After all, she's got every reason to try to hang on to anything he might have managed to put aside, hasn't she? And it certainly isn't unknown for men in Andrew's position to resort to a little bit of company fraud and hive off company assets for the benefit of his family.'

Deborah shook her head. 'He wasn't the type,' she told Ryan.

His eyebrows rose. 'Too honest? Oh, come on, Deborah...'

'Not too honest... too arrogant and too egotistical,' she corrected him. 'I don't think it ever occurred to him even to think about his wife and sons. I don't think he was even prepared to accept that the business had failed.'

'Mmm... well, we'll let that one ride for the time being, but it might be a good idea to keep an eye on our widow... just in case she decides to take an unexpected holiday abroad or suddenly discovers an inheritance from a long-lost relative!'

Deborah put down the file she was holding. Ryan's sexual manipulation she was prepared to tolerate, but when it came to her professionalism...

'Either you're prepared to trust my judgement, Ryan, or you aren't. And if you aren't...'