Cruel Legacy (52 page)

'Don't remind me...'

The company had fought off a takeover only the previous year and Mark knew how determined Stephanie was that it remain under her control. It seemed incredible that she could have built up such a successful business in so short a space of time, almost by accident.

She had initially started doing dried-flower arrangements merely as a hobby, and it had been curiosity initially which had led her to seek out suppliers direct as she searched for flowers that were not readily available.

She had bought her first wholesale business, ailing and run-down, from a small legacy left to her by her parents. Now she owned not only several wholesale businesses, but their suppliers as well—the growers. Her company owned growing fields in England and abroad, particularly Holland.

She was, he reflected, a very clever woman; a very shrewd woman; a very sexy woman... Like Deborah.

He fought to pull his attention back to what Stephanie was saying to him.

'You must be very proud of all that you've achieved,' Mark commented later.

'Why? Because I'm a woman?' She put down the file and gave him a level look. 'That's a very sexist remark,' she told him. 'And one you wouldn't have made were I a man.'

Mark flushed uncomfortably. 'I'm sorry. I...'

'Don't apologise,' she told him. 'Yes, I am proud.. .proud and lonely.'

She saw the look on his face and gave him a small half-smile.

'What is it, Mark? Did you expect me to behave like a man and claim that I'm better off without my husband? It isn't because I hate him that there hasn't been anyone else in my life, you know...'

She got up and walked over to the window.

'The year I made my first million I bought myself a Mercedes sports car. Not so much as a reward for doing so well, but as compensation for losing so much...' She turned round. 'My husband... he grew tired of being the husband of a successful woman, of having publicly to take second place, of feeling that my success demeaned him in the eyes of other men. In the end it was easier for him to bow to that peer pressure, to prove that he was still a "man" by leaving me for another woman, a younger, prettier woman—trophy wives, they call them in America, I understand—than to stay with me...

'Easier on him, easier on his pride... easier on the collective male psyche of his "friends", but it certainly wasn't easier on me.

'I wonder if any man can really understand what a woman goes through when she loses someone to whom she has given her trust, her love... her life? It destroys something inside us that I don't believe can ever be replaced.'

She pulled a wry face, and Mark saw that there was no trace of any mischief at all in her eyes now, only intense sadness.

'His affair wasn't the
cause
of our break-up, but the culmination of it. At first, in fact, he was proud of me, encouraged me.. .but then slowly he started distancing himself from me. Initially he blamed me for not having enough time for him, for making him feel that he wasn't important to me any more... Then he stopped making love to me.'

She gave him a brief look. 'Have you any idea what it does to a woman when a man,
her
man rejects her sexually. .. how demeaning it is to discover what you thought was a temporary incapacity on his part turns out to be a far more serious failure on yours? If a woman tells a man he's failed to arouse her, he can always save his ego by telling himself that she's lying. But when a woman fails to arouse a man...' She shook her head.

'That's how it starts; and the way it ends... It wasn't his sexual infidelity with another woman I couldn't forgive, but his infidelity towards the bond which I believed existed between us. He was the rock on which I had built my whole life; it was the security of believing I had
his
love that gave me the self-confidence to become the woman that on my own I had hardly dared believe I could be,

'He claimed that fulfilment and growth came at his expense, but that was
his
view of the situation, not mine. And the most ridiculous thing of all about it was that I never particularly wanted to be successful... initially it was just something for me to do while he forged ahead with his career... Just something to bring me in a little bit of pin-money so that he wouldn't feel I was totally dependent on him.

'Sometimes on a bad day I wake up in the morning feeling that I know how Midas must have felt... but do you know the worst thing of all?'

Mark shook his head. His muscles were tense, his heart thudding uncomfortably, his mind trying to close itself off from what his emotions were telling him.

'Success is like a drug—once you've tasted it there's no going back—for anyone. You become addicted to it... dependent on it, and very soon there isn't room for anything else in your life. All your energy, all of you is given over to feeding its voracious appetite; you daren't leave it or ignore it because it's all you've got left.

'Mark...' she said suddenly. 'What is it.. .what's wrong?'

'Nothing,' he denied. 'Nothing.'

'Of course, it's no wonder he left her. Everyone knows that the only reason she got that promotion in the first place is because...'

'Shush...'

Deborah tensed as the two girls chatting by the coffee machine fell silent as she walked past. She pretended that she hadn't heard them. What eke could she do?

She knew, of course, that it had been her they had been gossiping about, putting two and two together and doing a bit of 'creative accounting' with it.

'You look a bit down... Not still missing the boyfriend, I hope. You're better off without him.'

Deborah froze as she felt Ryan moving close to her. Too close, she decided wearily as she moved back from him.

'You're doing a nice job with the Kilcoyne liquidation,' he told her approvingly. 'I had the bank on this morning full of praise for the way you're handling things...'

Deborah said nothing. Three days ago he had been complaining that she wasn't showing enough aggression towards & company's debtors, and besides, Ryan never gave a compliment without demanding repayment for it—one way or another.

'We got a new case in this morning... I'd like you to have a look at it,' he added.

A new case... Had he forgotten that only last week he'd given her five case-files to work on, all of them involving an enormous amount of careful checking and crosschecking, dull, boring routine work... the kind of work she had thought she had left behind in her first junior job?

'I'm not sure if I've got time,' she began, but he overruled her, raising his eyebrows and telling her vigorously,

'Then you must make time... Delegate...'

'Delegate. To whom?'

When they had initially discussed her promotion, the package he had described had included extra staff to work under her, but so far they had not been forthcoming. She pointed this out to him now, watching as he shrugged and gave her a charming, lazy smile.

'I know...but there's nothing I can do, I'm afraid. Not until the partners ratify your promotion officially...'

'And when will that be?' Deborah asked him, trying not to sound too anxious. She was tired of the looks and innuendoes she was constantly intercepting, implying that her promotion was still not 'official' and that there was therefore something suspect about it.

Ryan shrugged carelessly. 'Not for a while yet. There isn't another full partners' meeting until the end of the month. But don't worry,' he told her, smiling at her. 'There won't be any problem.'

His capriciousness was wearing her down, she admitted after he had gone. It made her feel uncomfortable and on edge; wary and defensive. She had begun to feel so isolated and alone here since Mark had gone... isolated, alone... and... and vulnerable.

She shouldn't have changed the decor of the bedroom in such a rush, Deborah acknowledged as she stripped off her suit and pulled on her leggings and a thick sweater. The blue which had looked so pretty on the paint chart seemed cold and hard on the walls, the bedlinen she had chosen too stark and plain. The room still smelled of paint and she woke up in the morning with her head aching.

Increasingly she felt reluctant to go home at night, dreading the moment when she would open the door and walk into the empty flat.

She went into the kitchen and made herself a meal which she then pushed around her plate for twenty minutes before admitting that she didn't want it.

She was just scraping her food into the waste-bin when the doorbell rang. Automatically her stomach muscles locked even though logically she knew it wouldn't be Mark.

it wasn't... it was Ryan.

She stared at him blankly for several seconds until he stepped past her and into the flat.

'Ah, good, you are in... I was just leaving the office when I remembered that I hadn't gone through those files with you. So I nipped back and got them. You're not doing anything, are you...?'

'No... No, I'm not doing anything,' Deborah agreed, too surprised at seeing him to say anything else.

'Good, that gives us the whole evening... without any interruptions.'

Warning bells rang suddenly in her brain. But it was too late; he was already inside...

'Good... You've got a nice quick mind, Deborah. I like that,' Ryan told her approvingly as he closed the last file.

He leaned back against the settee, stretching luxuriously, his chest wall lifting against his shirt as he breathed deeply. He had discarded his jacket earlier, pulling off his tie as he did so. Beneath the fine cotton of his shirt Deborah could see the dark shadow of his body hair. He was a man who exulted in his own sexuality, she recognised; a man who was vain of his masculinity...proud of it...arrogant about it.

Watching him now, as he stretched, she realised that it wasn't only the muscles of his chest that were being revealed for her admiration, and it was hard work for her not to faD into the trap of hurriedly averting her eyes; of being flustered into pretending she had not seen the way the fine wool of his trousers had momentarily pulled against his thighs and crotch.

Somehow that brief outlining of his body had been more erotic than if he had had a full erection, and she suspected that he knew it... and had deliberately manufactured it? His action irritated her.

'How about some coffee?' he suggested. For a moment Deborah was tempted to refuse, but decided she was probably over-reacting.

Tonight, apart from that one provocative stretch, he had behaved towards her as the perfect male mentor, praising, explaining, encouraging without any hint of sexuality in his manner towards her, until now...

He had even managed to make her laugh as well, to forget, even if only for a handful of seconds, her own unhappiness as he'd related a couple of incidents from his own early career. But now she felt uneasy and edgy and would really have preferred him to leave.

She had just finished making the coffee when she heard him coming into the kitchen. She tensed automatically, turning round to face him, and then saw that he was laughing at her.

'Why so nervous?' he asked her. 'Not because you're alone with me, surely? Is it me you're really afraid of, Deborah... or is it yourself? It must be hard... being on your own...'

He was moving close to her, coming between her and the kitchen door, and in the constricted space of the small room there was nowhere for her to go.

As she tried to edge past him he caught hold of her, swinging her towards him as he told her, 'Don't play coy with me... You know how much I want you... and what you do to me... don't you...?'

He was holding her waist with one hand and her wrist with the other and now, as he spoke, he took hold of her hand and carried it down his body, watching her as he held it against his erection, moving his body against her palm, blatantly enjoying what he was doing, and equally blatantly impervious to her shock.

'Mmm... doesn't that feel good?' he asked her as he leaned forward. 'Very, very good,' he murmured against her ear as he wedged her between the worktop and his body, the hand which had been on her waist travelling up towards, her breast. 'Bigger that what you're used to, is it?' he ' Laughed. 'Well, you just wait until you've got it inside you... I promise you, you'll...' His hand was on her breast, his thumb pushing aside the fabric of her sweater.

Anger galvanised Deborah into life. She pushed hard against his chest and pulled fiercely away from him. 'Ryan, stop it!' she demanded. 'You've got it all wrong; I'm
not
interested.'

"No...?' He was still smiling at her.

'No,' she told him evenly, adding quietly,
'I
've always made it clear to you that
I
'm not in the market for an affair... for sex. You know that...'

Determinedly she held his gaze while he looked at her.

'I hope you know what you're doing.. .just what you're throwing away,' Ryan told her silkily. 'We could have been very good together, you and I... in bed and out of it...'

Deborah suppressed her anger. 'Professionally, I value your advice and friendship, Ryan, but I won't sleep with you,' she told him steadily.